“I’ll think of it,” said Tod, as we got up to leave. “I must say it is a nice little nest.”
In the doorway we encountered a tall lady with a brown face and a scarlet top-knot. She wore a thick gold chain, and bracelets to match.
“My sister, Miss Copperas,” said the captain. And he explained to her in a few words our business, and the purport of what had passed.
“For goodness’ sake, don’t lose the opportunity!” cried she, impressively affectionate, as though she had known us all our lives. “So advantageous an offer was never made to any one before: and but for my brother’s obstinately and wickedly deciding to go off to that wretched sea again, it would not be made now. Yes, Alexander,” turning to him, “I do call it quite wicked. Only think, sir”—to Tod—“a house full of beautiful furniture, every individual thing that a family can want; a piano here, a table-cloth press in the kitchen; plate, linen, knives, forks; a garden full of roses and a roller for the paths; and all to go for the miserably inadequate sum of a hundred and twenty-five pounds! But that’s my brother all over. He’s a true sailor. Setting himself up in a home to-day, and selling it off for an old song to-morrow.”
“Well, well, Fanny,” he said, when he could get a word in edgeways to stem the torrent of eloquence, “I have agreed to go, and I must go.”
“Have you been over the house?” she resumed, in the same voluble manner. “No? Then do pray come and see it. Oh, don’t talk of trouble. This is the dining-room,” throwing open a door behind her.
It was a little side-room, looking up the coast and over the fields; just enough chairs and tables in it for use. Upstairs we found three chambers, with their beds and other things. It all looked very comfortable, and I thought Captain Copperas was foolish to ask so small a sum.
“This is the linen closet,” said Miss Copperas, opening a narrow door at the top of the stairs, and displaying some shelves that seemed to be well-filled. “Sheets, table-cloths, dinner-napkins, towels, pillow-cases; everything for use. Anybody, taking the house, has only to step in, hang up his hat, and find himself at home. Look at those plates and dishes!” she ran on, as we got down again and entered the kitchen. “They are very nice—and enough to dine ten people.”
They were of light blue ware, and looked nice enough on the dresser shelves. The grenadier stood at the table, chopping parsley on a trencher, and did not condescend to take any notice of us.
Out in the garden next, amidst the roses—which grew all round the house, clustering everywhere. They were of that species called the cabbage-rose: large, and fragrant, and most beautiful. It made me think of the Roses by Bendemeer’s stream.
“I should like the place of all things!” cried Tod, as we strolled towards the bay for a sail; and found Druff seated in his boat, smoking. “I say, Druff, do you know Captain Copperas? Get in, Johnny.”
“Lives next door to me, at Rose Lodge,” answered Druff.
“Next door! What, is that low whitewashed shanty your abode? How long has Copperas lived here?”
“A matter of some months,” said Druff. “He came in the spring.”
“Are they nice kind of people?”
“They be civil to me,” answered Druff. “Sent my old missis a bottle o’ wine in, and some hot broth t’ other day, when she was ill. The captain——”
A sudden lurch put a stop to the discourse, and in a few minutes we glided out of the bay, Tod sitting in a brown reverie, his gaze fixed on the land and on Rose Lodge.
“My mind’s made up, Johnny. I shall take the place.”
I dropped my knife and fork in very astonishment. Our sail over, we were at dinner in the bar-parlour of the Whistling Wind.
“Surely you won’t do it, Tod!”
“Surely I shall, lad. I never saw such a nice little nest in all my life. And there’s no risk; you heard what Copperas said; I shall get my money back again when we want to leave it.”
“Look here, Tod: I was thinking a bit whilst we sat in the boat. Does it not seem to you to be too good to be genuine?”
It was Tod’s turn now to drop his knife and fork: and he did it angrily. “Just tell me what you mean, Johnny Ludlow.”
“All that furniture, and the piano, and the carpets, and the plate and linen: it looks such a heap to be going for only a hundred and twenty-five pounds.”
“Well?”
“I can’t think that Copperas means it.”
“Not mean it! Why, you young muff? There are the things, and he has offered them to me. If Copperas chooses to part with them for half their value, is it my place to tell him he’s a fool? The poor man is driven into a corner through want of time. Sailors are uncommonly improvident.”
“It is such an undertaking, Tod.”
“It is not your undertaking.”
“Of course it is a tremendous bargain; and it is a beautiful little place to have. But I can’t think what the pater will say to it.”
“I can,” said Tod. “When he hears of it—but that will not be yet awhile—he will come off here post-haste to blow me up; and end by falling in love with the roses. He always says that there is no rose like a cabbage-rose.”
“He will never forgive you, Tod; or me either. He will say the world’s coming to an end.”
“If you are afraid of him, Johnny, you can take yourself off. Hold up your plate for some more lamb, and hold your tongue.”
There was no help for it; anything I could say would have no more weight with Tod than so much wasted water; so I did as he bade me, and held my tongue. Down he went to Captain Copperas ere his dinner was well swallowed, and told him he would take the house. The Captain said he would have a short agreement drawn up; and Tod took out his cheque-book, to give a cheque for the money there and then. But the Captain, like an honest man, refused to receive it until the agreement was executed; and, if all the same, he would prefer money down to a cheque. Cheques were all very good, no doubt, he said; but sailors did not much understand them. Oh, of course, Tod answered, shaking him by the hand; he would get the money.
Inquiring of our landlady for the nearest bank, Tod was directed to a town called St. Ann’s, three miles off; and we started for it at once, pelting along the hot and dusty road. The bank found—a small one, with a glazed bow-window, Tod presented a cheque for a hundred and fifty pounds, twenty-five of it being for himself, and asked the clerk to cash it.
The clerk looked at the cheque then looked at Tod, and then at me. “This is not one of our cheques,” he said. “We have no account in this name.”
“Can’t you read?” asked Tod. “The cheque is upon the Worcester Old Bank. You know it well by reputation, I presume?”
The clerk whisked into a small kind of box, divided from the office by glass, where sat a bald-headed gentleman writing at a desk full of pigeon-holes. A short conference, and then the latter came to us, holding the cheque in his hand.
“We will send and present this at Worcester,” he said; “and shall get an answer the day after to-morrow. No doubt we shall then be able to give you the money.”
“Why can’t you give it me now?” asked Tod, in rather a fiery tone.
“Well, sir, we should be happy to do it; but it is not our custom to cash cheques for strangers.”
“Do you fear the cheque will not be honoured?” flashed Tod. “Why, I have five hundred pounds lying there! Do you suppose I want to cheat you?”
“Oh, certainly not,” said the banker, with suavity. “Only, you see, we cannot break through our standing rules. Call upon us the day after to-morrow, and doubtless the money will be ready.”
Tod came away swearing. “The infamous upstarts!” cried he. “To refuse to cash my cheque! Johnny, it’s my belief they take us for a couple of adventurers.”
The money came in due course. After receiving it from the cautious banker, we went straight to Rose Lodge, pelting back from St. Ann’s at a fine pace. Tod signed the agreement, and paid the cash in good Bank of England notes. Captain Copperas brought out a bottle of champagne, which tasted uncommonly good to our thirsty throats. He was to leave Cray Bay that night on his way to Liverpool to take possession of his ship; Miss Copperas would leave on the morrow, and then we should go in. And Elizabeth, the grenadier, was to remain with us as servant. Miss Copperas recommended her, hearing Tod say he did not know where to look for one. We bargained with her to keep up a good supply of pies, and to pay her twenty shillings a month.
“Will you allow me to leave one or two of my boxes for a few days?” asked Miss Copperas of Tod, when we went down on the following morning, and found her equipped for departure. “This has been so hurried a removal that I have not had time to pack all my things, and must leave it for Elizabeth to do.”
“Leave anything you like, Miss Copperas,” replied Tod, as he shook hands. “Do what you please. I’m sure the house seems more like yours than mine.”
She thanked him, wished us both good-bye, and set off to walk to the coach-office, attended by the grenadier, and a boy wheeling her luggage. And we were in possession of our new home.
It was just delightful. The weather was charming, though precious hot, and the new feeling of being in a house of our own, with not as much as a mouse to control us and our movements, was satisfactory in the highest degree. We passed our days sailing about with old Druff, and came home to the feasts prepared by the grenadier, and to sit among the roses. Altogether we had never had a time like it. Tod took the best chamber, facing the sea; I had the smaller one over the dining-room, looking up coastwards.
“I shall go fishing to-morrow, Johnny,” Tod said to me one evening. “We’ll bring home some trout for supper.”
He was stretched on three chairs before the open window; coat off, pipe in mouth. I turned round from the piano. It was not much of an instrument. Miss Copperas had said, when I hinted so to her on first trying it, that it wanted “age.”
“Shall you? All right,” I answered, sitting down by him. The stars were shining on the calm blue water; here and there lights, looking like stars also, twinkled from some vessels at anchor.
“If I thought they wouldn’t quite die of the shock, Johnny, I’d send the pater and madam an invitation to come off here and pay us a visit. They would fall in love with the place at once.”
“Oh, Tod, I wish you would!” I cried, eagerly seizing on the words. “They could have your room, and you have mine, and I would go into the little one at the back.”
“I dare say! I was only joking, lad.”
The last words and their tone destroyed my hopes. It is inconvenient to possess a conscience. Advantageous though the bargain was that Tod had made, and delightfully though our days were passing, I could not feel easy until they knew of it at home.
“I wish you would let me write and tell them, Tod.”
“No,” said he. “I don’t want the pater to whirl himself off here and spoil our peace—for that’s what would come of it.”
“He thinks we are in some way with the Temples. His letter implied it.”
“The best thing he can think.”
“But I want to write to the mother, Tod. She must be wondering why we don’t.”
“Wondering won’t give her the fever, lad. Understand me, Mr. Johnny: you are not to write.”
Breakfast over in the morning, we crossed the meadows to the trout stream, with the fishing-tackle and a basket of frogs. Tod complained of the intense heat. The dark blue sky was cloudless; the sun beat down upon our heads.
“I’ll tell you what, Johnny,” he said, when we had borne the blaze for an hour on the banks, the fish refusing to bite: “we should be all the cooler for our umbrellas. You’ll have a sunstroke, if you don’t look out.”
“It strikes me you won’t catch any fish to-day.”
“Does it? You be off and get the parapluies.”
The low front window stood open when I reached home. It was the readiest way of entering; and I passed on to the passage to the umbrella-stand. The grenadier came dashing out of her kitchen, looking frightened.
“Oh!” said she, “it’s you!”
“I have come back for the umbrellas, Elizabeth; the sun’s like a furnace. Why! what have you got there?”
The kitchen was strewed with clothes from one end of it to the other. On the floor stood the two boxes left by Miss Copperas.
“I am only putting up Miss Copperas’s things,” returned Elizabeth, in her surly way. “It’s time they were sent off.”
“What a heap she must have left behind!” I remarked, and left the grenadier to her work.
We got home in the evening, tired out. The grenadier had a choice supper ready; and, in answer to me, said the trunks of Miss Copperas were packed and gone. When bed-time came, Tod was asleep at the window, and wouldn’t awake. The grenadier had gone to her room ages ago; I wanted to go to mine.
“Tod, then! Do please wake up: it is past ten.”
A low growl answered me. And in that same moment I became aware of some mysterious stir outside the front-gate. People seemed to be trying it. The grenadier always locked it at night.
“Tod! Tod! There are people at the gate—trying to get in.”
The tone and the words aroused him. “Eh? What do you say, Johnny? People are trying the gate?”
“Listen! They are whispering to one another. They are trying the fastenings.”
“What on earth does anybody want at this time of night?” growled Tod. “And why can’t they ring like decent people? What’s your business?” he roared out from the window. “Who the dickens are you?”
“Hush, Tod! It—it can’t be the Squire, can it? Come down here to look after us.”
The suggestion silenced him for a moment.
“I—I don’t think so, Johnny,” he slowly said. “No, it’s not the Squire: he would be letting off at us already at the top of his voice; he wouldn’t wait to come in to do it. Let’s go and see. Come along.”
Two young men stood at the gate. One of them turned the handle impatiently as we went down the path.
“What do you want?” demanded Tod.
“I wish to see Captain Copperas.”
“Then you can’t see him,” answered Tod, woefully cross after being startled out of his sleep. “Captain Copperas does not live here.”
“Not live here!” repeated the man. “That’s gammon. I know he does live here.”
“I tell you he does not,” haughtily repeated Tod. “Do you doubt my word?”
“Who does live here, then?” asked the man, in a different tone, evidently impressed.
“Mr. Todhetley.”
“I can take my oath that Captain Copperas lived here ten days ago.”
“What of that? He is gone, and Mr. Todhetley’s come.”
“Can I see Mr. Todhetley?”
“You see him now. I am he. Will you tell me your business?”
“Captain Copperas owes me a small account, and I want it settled.”
The avowal put Tod in a rage; and he showed it. “A small account! Is this a proper time to come bothering gentlemen for your small accounts—when folks are gone to bed, or going?”
“Last time I came in the afternoon. Perhaps that was the wrong time? Any way, Captain Copperas put me off, saying I was to call some evening, and he’d pay it.”
“And I’ll thank you to betake yourself off again now. How dare you disturb people at this unearthly hour! As to Captain Copperas, I tell you that he is no longer here.”
“Then I should say that Captain Copperas was a swindler.”
Tod turned on his heel at the last words, and the men went away, their retreating footsteps echoing on the road. I thought I heard the grenadier’s window being shut, so the noise must have disturbed her.
“Swindlers themselves!” cried Tod, as he fastened the house-door. “I’ll lay you a guinea, Johnny, they were two loose fellows trying to sneak inside and see what they could pick up.”
Nevertheless, in the morning he asked the grenadier whether it was true that such men had come there after any small account. And the grenadier resented the supposition indignantly. Captain Copperas owed no “small accounts” that she knew of, she said; and she had lived with him and Miss C. ever since they came to Cray Bay. She only wished she had seen the men herself last night; she would have answered them. And when, upon this, I said I thought I had heard her shut her window down, and supposed she had been listening, she denied it, and accused me of being fanciful.
“Impudent wretches!” ejaculated Tod; “to come here and asperse a man of honour like Copperas.”
That day passed off quietly, and to our thorough enjoyment; but the next one was fated to bring us some events. Some words of Tod’s, as I was pouring out the breakfast coffee, startled me.
“Oh, by Jupiter! How have they found us out here?”
Looking up, I saw the postman entering the gate with a letter. The same thought struck us both—that it was some terrible mandate from the Squire. Tod went to the window and held out his hand.
“For Elizabeth, at Captain Copperas’s,” read out the man, as he handed it to Tod. It was a relief, and Tod sent me with it to the grenadier.
But in less than one minute afterwards she came into the room, bathed in tears. The letter was to tell her that her mother was lying ill at their home, some unpronounceable place in Wales, and begging earnestly to see her.
“I’m sorry to leave you at a pinch; but I must go,” sobbed the grenadier. “I can’t help myself; I shall start by the afternoon coach.”
Well, of course there was nothing to be said against it. A mother was a mother. But Tod began to wonder what on earth we should do: as did I, for the matter of that. The grenadier offered to cook our luncheon before starting, which we looked upon as a concession.
“Let’s go for a sail, Johnny, and leave perplexities to right themselves.”
And a glorious sail we had! Upon getting back at one o’clock, we found a huge meat pie upon the luncheon-table, and the grenadier with her bonnet on. Tod handed her five shillings; the sum, as she computed, that was due to her.
We heard the bumping of her boxes on the stairs. At the gate stood the boy with the truck, ready to wheel them to the coach-office, as he had wheeled those of Miss Copperas. Tod was helping himself to some more pie, when the grenadier threw open the door.
“My boxes are here, gentlemen. Will you like to look at them?”
“Look at them for what?” asked Tod, after staring a minute.
“To see that I’m taking none of your property away inside them.”
At last Tod understood what she meant, and felt inclined to throw the dish at her head. “Shut the door, and don’t be a fool,” said he. “And I hope you’ll find your mother better,” I called out after her.
“And now, Johnny, what are we to do?” cried he, when lunch was over and there was no one to take it away. “This is like a second edition of Robinson Crusoe.”
We left it where it was, and went off to the shops and the Whistling Wind, asking if they could tell us of a servant. But servants seemed not to be forthcoming at a pinch; and we told our troubles to old Druff.
“My missis shall come in and see a bit to things for ye,” said he. “She can light the fire in the morning, anyway, and boil the kettle.”
And with the aid of Mother Druff—an ancient dame who went about in clogs—we got on till after breakfast in the morning, when a damsel came after the place. She wore a pink gauze bonnet, smart and tawdry, and had a pert manner.
“Can you cook?” asked Tod.
The substance of her answer was, that she could do everything under the sun, provided she were not “tanked” after. Her late missis was for ever a-tanking. Would there be any washing to do?—because washing didn’t agree with her: and how often could she go out, and what was the wages?
Tod looked at me in doubt, and I slightly shook my head. It struck me that she would not do at any price. “I think you won’t suit,” said he to her.
“Oh,” returned she, all impertinence. “I can go then where I shall suit: and so, good-morning, gentlemen. There’s no call for you to be so uppish. I didn’t come after your forks and spoons.”
“The impudent young huzzy!” cried Tod, as she slammed the gate after her. “But she might do better than nobody, Johnny.”
“I don’t like her, Tod. If it rested with me, I’d rather live upon bread-and-cheese than take her.”
“Bread-and-cheese!” he echoed. “It is not a question of only bread-and-cheese. We must get our beds made and the knives cleaned.”
It seemed rather a blue look-out. Tod said he would go up again to the Whistling Wind, and tell Mother Jones she must find us some one. Picking a rose as he went down the path, he met a cleanly-looking elderly woman who was entering. She wore a dark apron, and old-fashioned white cap, and said she had come after the place.
“What can you do?” began Tod. “Cook?”
“Cook and clean too, sir,” she answered. And I liked the woman the moment I saw her.
“Oh, I don’t know that there’s much cleaning to do, beyond the knives,” remarked Tod. “We want our dinners cooked, you know, and the beds made. That’s about all.”
The woman smiled at that, as if she thought he knew little about it. “I have been living at the grocer’s, up yonder, sir, and they can give me a good character, though I say it. I’m not afraid of doing all you can want done, and of giving satisfaction, if you’d please to try me.”
“You’ll do,” said Tod, after glancing at me. “Can you come in at once?”
“As soon as you like, sir. When would you please to go for my character?”
“Oh, bother that!” said he. “I’ve no doubt you are all right. Can you make pigeon pies?”
“That I can, sir.”
“You’ll do then. What is your name?”
“Elizabeth Ho——”
“Elizabeth?” he interrupted, not giving her time to finish. “Why, the one just gone was Elizabeth. A grenadier, six feet high.”
“I’ve been mostly called Betty, sir.”
“Then we’ll call you Betty too.”
She went away, saying that she’d come back with her aprons. Tod looked after her.
“You like her, don’t you, Johnny?”
“That I do. She’s a good sort; honest as can be. You did not ask her about wages.”
“Oh, time enough for that,” said he.
And Betty turned out to be good as gold. Her history was a curious one; she told it to me one evening in the kitchen; in her small way she had been somewhat of a martyr. But God had been with her always, she said; through more trouble than the world knew of.
We had a letter from Mrs. Todhetley, redirected on from Sanbury. The chief piece of news it contained was, that the Squire and old Jacobson had gone off to Great Yarmouth for a fortnight.
“That’s good,” said Tod. “Johnny lad, you may write home now.”
“And tell about Rose Lodge?”
“Tell all you like. I don’t mind madam. She’ll have leisure to digest it against the pater returns.”
I wrote a long letter, and told everything, going into the minute details that she liked to hear, about the servants, and all else. Rose Lodge was the most wonderful bargain, I said, and we were both as happy as the days were long.
The church was a little primitive edifice near the sands. We went to service on Sunday morning; and upon getting home afterwards, found the cloth not laid. Tod had ordered dinner to be on the table. He sent me to the kitchen to blow up Betty.
“It is quite ready and waiting to be served; but I can’t find a clean tablecloth,” said Betty.
“Why, I told you where the tablecloths were,” shouted Tod, who heard the answer. “In the cupboard at the top of the stairs.”
“But there are no tablecloths there, sir,” cried she. “Nor anything else either, except a towel or two.”
Tod went upstairs in a passion, bidding her follow him, and flung the cupboard door open. He thought she had looked in the wrong place.
But Betty was right. With the exception of two or three old towels and some stacks of newspapers, the cupboard was empty.
“By Jove!” cried Tod. “Johnny, that grenadier must have walked off with all the linen!”
Whether she had, or had not, none to speak of could be found now. Tod talked of sending the police after her, and wrote an account of her delinquencies to Captain Copperas, addressing the letter to the captain’s brokers in Liverpool.
“But,” I debated, not quite making matters out to my own satisfaction, “the grenadier wanted us to examine her boxes, you know.”
“All for a blind, Johnny.”
It was the morning following this day, Monday, that, upon looking from my window, something struck me as being the matter with the garden. What was it? Why, all the roses were gone! Down I rushed, half dressed, burst out at the back-door, and gazed about me.
It was a scene of desolation. The rose-trees had been stripped; every individual rose was clipped neatly off from every tree. Two or three trees were left untouched before the front window; all the rest were rifled.
“What the mischief is the matter, Johnny?” called out Tod, as I was hastily questioning Betty. “You are making enough noise for ten, lad.”
“We have had robbers here, Tod. Thieves. All the roses are stolen.”
He made a worse noise than I did. Down he came, full rush, and stamped about the garden like any one wild. Old Druff and his wife heard him, and came up to the palings. Betty, busy in her kitchen, had not noticed the disaster.
“I see Tasker’s people here betimes this morning,” observed Druff. “A lot of ’em came. ’Twas a pity, I thought, to slice off all them nice big blows.”
“Saw who?—saw what?” roared Tod, turning his anger upon Druff. “You mean to confess to me that you saw these rose-trees rifled, and did not stop it?”
“Nay, master,” said Druff, “how could I interfere with Tasker’s people? Their business ain’t mine.”
“Who are Tasker’s people?” foamed Tod. “Who is Tasker?”
“Tasker? Oh, Tasker’s that there man at the white cottage on t’other side the village. Got a big garden round it.”
“Is he a poacher? Is he a robber?”
“Bless ye, master, Tasker’s no robber.”
“And yet you saw him take my roses?”
“I see him for certain. I see him busy with the baskets as the men filled ’em.”
Dragging me after him, Tod went striding off to Tasker’s. We knew the man by sight; had once spoken to him about his garden. He was a kind of nurseryman. Tasker was standing near his greenhouse.
“Why did I come and steal your roses?” he quietly repeated, when he could understand Tod’s fierce demands. “I didn’t steal ’em, sir; I picked ’em.”
“And how dared you do it? Who gave you leave to do it?” foamed Tod, turning green and purple.
“I did it because they were mine.”
“Yours! Are you mad?”
“Yes, sir, mine. I bought ’em and paid for ’em.”
Tod did think him mad at the moment; I could see it in his face. “Of whom, pray, did you buy them?”
“Of Captain Copperas. I had ’em from the garden last year and the year afore: other folks lived in the place then. Three pounds I gave for ’em this time. The captain sold ’em to me a month ago, and I was to take my own time for gathering them.”
I don’t think Tod had ever felt so floored in all his life. He stood back against the pales and stared. A month ago we had not known Captain Copperas.
“I might have took all the lot: ’twas in the agreement; but I left you a few before the front winder,” said Tasker, in an injured tone. “And you come and attack me like this!”
“But what do you want with them? What are they taken for?”
“To make otter of roses,” answered Tasker. “I sell ’em to the distillers.”
“At any rate, though it be as you say, I would have taken them openly,” contended Tod. “Not come like a thief in the night.”
“But then I had to get ’em afore the sun was powerful,” calmly answered Tasker.
Tod was silent all the way home. I had not spoken a word, good or bad. Betty brought in the coffee.
“Pour it out,” said he to me. “But, Johnny,” he presently added, as he stirred his cup slowly round, “I can’t think how it was that Copperas forget to tell me he had sold the roses.”
“Do you suppose he did forget?”
“Why, of course he forgot. Would an honest man like Copperas conceal such a thing if he did not forget it? You will be insinuating next, Johnny Ludlow, that he is as bad as Tasker.”
I must say we were rather in the dumps that day. Tod went off fishing; I carried the basket and things. I did wish I had not said so much about the roses to Mrs. Todhetley. What I wrote was, that they were brighter and sweeter and better than those other roses by Bendemeer’s stream.
I thought of the affair all day long. I thought of it when I was going to bed at night. Putting out the candle, I leaned from my window and looked down on the desolate garden. The roses had made its beauty.
“Johnny! Johnny lad! Are you in bed?”
The cautious whisper came from Tod. Bringing my head inside the room, I saw him at the door in his slippers and braces.
“Come into my room,” he whispered. “Those fellows who disturbed us the other night are at the gate again.”
Tod’s light was out and his window open. We could see a man bending down outside the gate, fumbling with the lock. Presently the bell was pulled very gently, as if the ringer thought the house might be asleep and he did not want to awaken it. There was something quite ghostly to the imagination in being disturbed at night like this.
“Who’s there?” shouted Tod.
“I am,” answered a cautious voice. “I want to see Captain Copperas.”
“Come along, Johnny. This is getting complicated.”
We went out to the gate, and saw a man: he was not either of the two who had come before. Tod answered him as he had answered them, but did not open the gate.
“Are you a friend of the captain’s?” whispered the man.
“Yes, I am,” said Tod. “What then?”
“Well, see here,” resumed he, in a confidential tone. “If I don’t get to see him it will be the worse for him. I come as a friend; come to warn him.”
“But I tell you he is not in the house,” argued Tod. “He has let it to me. He has left Cray Bay. His address? No, I cannot give it you.”
“Very well,” said the man, evidently not believing a word, “I am come out of friendliness. If you know where he is, you just tell him that Jobson has been here, and warns him to look out for squalls. That’s all.”
“I say, Johnny, I shall begin to fancy we are living in some mysterious castle, if this kind of thing is to go on,” remarked Tod, when the man had gone. “It seems deuced queer, altogether.”
It seemed queerer still the next morning. For a gentleman walked in and demanded payment for the furniture. Captain Copperas had forgotten to settle for it, he said—if he had gone away. Failing the payment, he should be obliged to take away the chairs and tables. Tod flew into a rage, and ordered him out of the place. Upon which their tongues went in for a pitched battle, and gave out some unorthodox words. Cooling down by-and-by, an explanation was come to.
He was a member of some general furnishing firm, ten miles off. Captain Copperas had done them the honour to furnish his house from their stores, including the piano, paying a small portion on account. Naturally they wanted the rest. In spite of certain strange doubts that were arising touching Captain Copperas, Tod resolutely refused to give any clue to his address. Finally the applicant agreed to leave matters as they were for three or four days, and wrote a letter to be forwarded to Copperas.
But the news that arrived from Liverpool staggered us more than all. The brokers sent back Tod’s first letter to Copperas (telling him of the grenadier’s having marched off with the linen), and wrote to say that they didn’t know any Captain Copperas; that no gentleman of that name was in their employ, or in command of any of their ships.
As Tod remarked, it seemed deuced queer. People began to come in, too, for petty accounts that appeared to be owing—a tailor, a bootmaker, and others. Betty shed tears.
One evening, when we had come in from a long day’s fishing, and were sitting at dinner in rather a gloomy mood, wondering what was to be the end of it, we caught sight of a man’s coat-tails whisking up to the front-door.
“Sit still,” cried Tod to me, as the bell rang. “It’s another of those precious creditors. Betty! don’t you open the door. Let the fellow cool his heels a bit.”
But, instead of cooling his heels, the fellow stepped aside to our open window, and stood there, looking in at us. I leaped out of my chair, and nearly out of my skin. It was Mr. Brandon.
“And what do you two fine gentlemen think of yourselves?” began he, when we had let him in. “You don’t starve, at any rate, it seems.”
“You’ll take some, won’t you, Mr. Brandon?” said Tod politely, putting the breast of a duck upon a plate, while I drew a chair for him to the table.
Ignoring the offer, he sat down by the window, threw his yellow silk handkerchief across his head, as a shade against the sun and the air, and opened upon our delinquencies in his thinnest tones. In the Squire’s absence, Mrs. Todhetley had given him my letter to read, and begged him to come and see after us, for she feared Tod might be getting himself into some inextricable mess. Old Brandon’s sarcasms were keen. To make it worse, he had heard of the new complications, touching Copperas and the furniture, at the Whistling Wind.
“So!” said he, “you must take a house and its responsibilities upon your shoulders, and pay the money down, and make no inquiries!”
“We made lots of inquiries,” struck in Tod, wincing.
“Oh, did you? Then I was misinformed. You took care to ascertain whether the landlord of the house would accept you as tenant; whether the furniture was the man’s own to sell, and had no liabilities upon it; whether the rent and taxes had been paid up to that date?”
As Tod had done nothing of the kind, he could only slash away at the other duck, and bite his lips.
“You took to a closet of linen, and did not think it necessary to examine whether linen was there, or whether it was all dumb-show——”
“I’m sure the linen was there when we saw it,” interrupted Tod.
“You can’t be sure; you did not handle it, or count it. The Squire told you you would hasten to make ducks and drakes of your five hundred pounds. It must have been burning a hole in your pocket. As to you, Johnny Ludlow, I am utterly surprised: I did give you credit for possessing some sense.”
“I could not help it, sir. I’m sure I should never have mistrusted Captain Copperas.” But doubts had floated in my mind whether the linen had not gone away in those boxes of Miss Copperas, that I saw the grenadier packing.
Tod pulled a letter-case out of his breast-pocket, selected a paper, and handed it to Mr. Brandon. It was the cheque for one hundred pounds.
“I thought of you, sir, before I began upon the ducks and drakes. But you were not at home, and I could not give it you then. And I thank you very much indeed for what you did for me.”
Mr. Brandon read the cheque and nodded his head sagaciously.
“I’ll take it, Joseph Todhetley. If I don’t, the money will only go in folly.” By which I fancied he had not meant to have the money repaid to him.
“I think you are judging me rather hardly,” said Tod. “How was I to imagine that the man was not on the square? When the roses were here, the place was the prettiest place I ever saw. And it was dirt-cheap.”
“So was the furniture, to Copperas,” cynically observed Mr. Brandon.
“What is done is done,” growled Tod. “May I give you some raspberry pudding?”
“Some what? Raspberry pudding! Why, I should not digest it for a week. I want to know what you are going to do.”
“I don’t know, sir. Do you?”
“Yes. Get out of the place to-morrow. You can’t remain in it with bare walls: and it’s going to be stripped, I hear. Green simpletons, you must be! I dare say the landlord will let you off by paying him three months’ rent. I’ll see him myself. And you’ll both come home with me, like two young dogs with their tails burnt.”
“And lose all the money I’ve spent?” cried Tod.
“Ay, and think yourself well off that it is not more. You possess no redress; as to finding Copperas, you may as well set out to search for the philosopher’s stone. It is nobody’s fault but your own; and if it shall bring you caution, it may be an experience cheaply bought.”
“I could never have believed it of a sailor,” Tod remarked ruefully to old Druff, when we were preparing to leave.
“Ugh! fine sailor he was!” grunted Druff. “He warn’t a sailor. Not a reg’lar one. Might ha’ been about the coast a bit in a collier, perhaps—nothing more. As to that grenadier, I believe she was just another of ’em—a sister.”
But we heard a whiff of news later that told us Captain Copperas was not so bad as he seemed. After he had taken Rose Lodge and furnished it, some friend, for whom in his good-nature he had stood surety to a large amount, let him in for the whole, and ruined him. Honest men are driven into by-paths sometimes.
And so that was the inglorious finale to our charming retreat by Bendemeer’s stream.
In a side lane of Timberdale, just off the churchyard, was the cottage of Jael Batty, whose name you have heard before. Side by side with it stood another cottage, inhabited by Lee, the assistant letter-carrier; or, as Timberdale generally called him, the letter-man. These cottages had a lively look-out, the farrier’s shop and a few thatched hayricks opposite; sideways, the tombstones in the graveyard.
Some men are lucky in life, others are unlucky. Andrew Lee was in the latter category. He had begun life as a promising farmer, but came down in the world. First of all, he had to pay a heap of money for some man who had persuaded him to become his security, and that stripped him of his means. Afterwards a series of ill-fortunes set in on the farm: crops failed, cattle died, and Lee was sold up. Since then, he had tried at this and tried at that; been in turn a farmer’s labourer, an agent for coal, and the proprietor of a shop devoted to the benefit of the younger members of the community, its speciality being bull’s-eyes and besoms for birch-rods. For some few years now he had settled down in this cottage next door to Jael Batty’s, and carried out the letters at fourteen shillings a-week.
There were two letter-men, Spicer and Lee. But there need not have been two, only that Timberdale was so straggling a parish, the houses in it lying far and wide. Like other things in this world, fortune, even in so trifling a matter as these two postmen, was not dealt out equally. Spicer had the least work, for he took the home delivery, and had the most pay; Lee did all the country tramping, and had only the fourteen shillings. But when the place was offered to Lee he was at a very low ebb indeed, and took it thankfully, and thought he was set up in riches for life; for, as you well know, we estimate things by comparison.
Andrew Lee was not unlucky in his fortunes only. Of his three children, not one had prospered. The son married all too young; within a year he and his wife were both dead, leaving a baby-boy to Lee as a legacy. The elder daughter had emigrated to the other end of the world with her husband; and the younger daughter had a history. She was pretty and good and gentle, but just a goose. Goose that she was, though, all the parish liked Mamie Lee.
About four years before the time I am telling of, there came a soldier to Timberdale, on a visit to Spicer the letter-carrier, one James West. He was related to Spicer’s wife; her nephew, or cousin, or something of that sort; a tall, good-looking, merry-tempered dragoon, with a dashing carriage and a dashing tongue; and he ran away with the heart of Mamie Lee. That might not so much have mattered in the long-run, for such privilege is universally allowed to the sons of Mars; but he also ran away with her. One fine morning Mr. James West was missing from Timberdale, and Mamie Lee was missing also. The parish went into a rapture of indignation over it, not so much at him as at her; called her a “baggage,” and hoping her folly would come home to her. Poor old Lee thought he had received his death-blow, and his hair turned grey swiftly.
Not more than twelve months had gone by when Mamie was back again. Jael Batty was running out one evening to get half-a-pound of sugar at Salmon’s shop, when she met a young woman with a bundle staggering down the lane, and keeping under the side of the hedge as if she were afraid of falling, or else did not want to be seen. Too weak to carry the bundle, she seemed ready to sink at every step. Jael Batty, who had her curiosity like other people, though she was deaf, peered into the bent face, and brought herself up with a shriek.
“What, is it you, Mamie Lee! Well, the impedence of this! How on earth could you pick up the brass to come back here?”
“Are my poor father and mother alive? Do they still live here?” faltered Mamie, turning her piteous white face to Jael.
“They be both alive; but it’s no thanks to you. If they—— Oh, if I don’t believe—— What have you got in that ragged old shawl?”
“It’s my baby,” answered Mamie; and she passed on.
Andrew Lee took her in with sobs and tears, and thanked Heaven she had come back, and welcomed her unreasonably. The parish went on at him for it, showering down plenty of abuse, and asking whether he did not feel ashamed of himself. There was even a talk of his post as letter-carrier being taken from him; but it came to nothing. Rymer was postmaster then, though he was about giving it up; and he was a man of too much sorrow himself to inflict it needlessly upon another. On the contrary, he sent down cordials and tonics and things for Mamie, who had had a fever and come home dilapidated as to strength, and never charged for them. Thomas Rymer’s own heart was slowly breaking, so he could feel for her.
The best or the worst of it was, that Mamie said she was married. Which assertion was of course not believed, and only added to her sin in the eyes of Timberdale. The tale she told was this. That James West had taken her straight to some town, where he had previously had the banns put up, and married her there. The day after the marriage they had sailed for Ireland, whither he had to hasten to join his regiment, his leave of absence having expired. At the end of some seven or eight months, the regiment was ordered to India, and he departed with it, leaving her in her obscure lodging at Cork. By-and-by her baby was born; she was very ill then; very; had fever and a cough, and sundry other complications; and what with lying ill eight weeks, and being obliged to pay a doctor and a nurse all that time, besides other expenses, she spent all the money Mr. James West left with her, and had no choice between starvation and coming back to Timberdale.
You should have heard how this account was scoffed at. The illness, and the baby, and the poverty nobody disputed—they were plain enough to be seen by all Timberdale; and what better could she expect, they would like to know? But when she came to talk about the church (or rather, old Lee for her, second-hand, for she was not at all a person now to be spoken to by Timberdale), then their tongues were let loose in all kinds of inconvenient questions. Which was the town?—and which was the church in it?—and where were her “marriage lines”? Mamie could give no answer at all. She did not know the name of the town, or where it was situated. James had taken her with him in the train to it, and that was all she knew; and she did not know the name of the church or the clergyman; and as to marriage lines, she had never heard of any. So, as Timberdale said, what could you make out of this, except one thing—that Mr. Jim West had been a deep rogue, and taken her in. At best, it could have been but a factitious ceremony; perhaps in some barn, got up like a church for the occasion, said the more tolerant, willing to give excuse for pretty Mamie if they could; but the chief portion of Timberdale looked upon the whole as an out-and-out invention of her own.
Poor Andrew Lee had never taken a hopeful view of the affair from the first; but he held to the more tolerant opinion that Mamie had been herself deceived, and he could not help being cool to Spicer in consequence. Spicer in retaliation threw all the blame upon Mamie, and held up Mr. James West as a paragon of virtue.
But, as the time went on, and no news, no letter or other token arrived from West, Mamie herself gave in. That he had deceived her she slowly became convinced of, and despair took hold of her heart. Timberdale might have the satisfaction of knowing that she judged herself just as humbly and bitterly as they judged her, and was grieving herself to a shadow. Three years had passed now since her return, and the affair was an event of the past; and Mamie wore, metaphorically, the white sheet of penitence, and hardly dared to show her face outside the cottage-door.
But you may easily see how all this, besides the sorrow, told upon Lee. Fourteen shillings a week for a man and his wife to exist upon cannot be called much, especially if they have seen better days and been used to better living. When the first grandchild, poor little orphan, arrived to be kept, Lee and his wife both thought it hard, though quite willing to take him; and now they had Mamie and another grandchild. This young one was named Jemima, for Mamie had called her after her faithless husband. Five people and fourteen shillings a-week, and provisions dear, and house-rent to pay, and Lee’s shoes perpetually wanting to be mended! One or two generous individuals grew rather fond of telling Lee that he would be better off in the union.
It was November weather. A cold, dark, biting, sharp, drizzly morning. Andrew Lee got up betimes, as usual: he had to be out soon after seven to be ready for his letter delivery. In the kitchen when he entered it, he found his daughter there before him, coaxing the kettle to boil on the handful of fire, that she might make him his cup of tea and give him his breakfast. She was growing uncommonly weak and shadowy-looking now: a little woman, still not much more than a girl, with a shawl folded about her shivering shoulders, a hacking cough, and a mild, non-resisting face. Her father had lately told her that he would not have her get up in the morning; she was not fit for it: what he wanted done, he could do himself.
“Now, Mamie, why are you here? You should attend to what I say, child.”
She got up from her knees and turned her sad brown eyes towards him: bright and sweet eyes once, but now dimmed with the tears and sorrow of the last three years.
“I am better up; I am indeed, father. Not sleeping much, I get tired of lying: and my cough is worse in bed.”
He sat down to his cup of tea and to the bread she placed before him. Some mornings there was a little butter, or dripping, or mayhap bacon fat; but this morning he had to eat his bread dry. It was getting near the end of the week, and the purse ran low. Lee had a horror of debt, and would never let his people run into it for the smallest sum if he knew it.
“It’s poor fare for you this morning, father; but I’ll try and get a morsel of boiled pork for dinner, and we’ll have it ready early. I expect to be paid to-day for the bit of work I have been doing for young Mrs. Ashton. Some of those greens down by the apple-trees want cutting: they’ll be nice with a bit of pork.”
Lee turned his eyes in the direction of the greens and the apple-trees; but the window was misty, and he could only see the drizzle of rain-drops on the diamond panes. As he sat there, a thought came into his head that he was beginning to feel old: old, and worn, and shaky. Trouble ages a man more than work, more than time; and Lee never looked at the wan face of his daughter, and at its marks of sad repentance, but he felt anew the sting which was always pricking him more or less. What with that, and his difficulty to keep the pot boiling, and his general state of shakiness, Lee was older than his years. Timberdale had fallen into the habit of calling him Old Lee, you see; but he was not sixty yet. He had a nice face; when it was a young face it must have been like Mamie’s. It had furrows in it now, and his scanty grey locks hung down on each side of it.
Putting on his top-coat, which was about as thin as those remarkable sheets told of by Brian O’Linn, Lee went out buttoning it. The rain had ceased, but the cold wind took him as he went down the narrow garden-path, and he could not help shivering.
“It’s a bitter wind to-day, father; in the north-east, I think,” said Mamie, standing at the door to close it after him. “I hope there’ll be no letters for Crabb.”
Lee, as he pressed along in the teeth of the cruel east wind, was hoping the same. Salmon the grocer, who had taken the post-office, as may be remembered, when the late Thomas Rymer gave it up, was sorting the letters in the room behind the shop when Lee went in. Spicer, a lithe, active, dark-eyed man of forty-five, stood at the end of the table waiting for his bag. Lee went and stood beside him, giving him a brief good-morning: he had not taken kindly to the man since West ran away with Mamie.
“A light load this morning,” remarked Mr. Salmon to Spicer, as he handed him his appropriate bag. “And here’s yours, Lee,” he added a minute after: “not heavy either. Too cold for people to write, I suppose.”
“Anything for Crabb, sir?”
“For Crabb? Well, yes, I think there is. For the Rector.”
Upon going out, Spicer turned one way, Lee the other. Spicer’s district was easy as play; Lee’s was a regular country tramp, the farm-houses lying in all the four points of the compass. The longest tramp was over to us at Crabb. And why the two houses, our own and Coney’s farm, should continue to be comprised in the Timberdale delivery, instead of that of Crabb, people could never understand. It was so still, however, and nobody bestirred himself to alter it. For one thing, we were not often at Crabb Cot, and the Coneys did not have many letters, so it was not like an every-day delivery: we chanced to be there just now.
The letter spoken of by Salmon, which would bring Lee to Crabb this morning, was for the Reverend Herbert Tanerton, Rector of Timberdale. He and his wife, who was a niece of old Coney’s, were now staying at the farm on a week’s visit, and he had given orders to Salmon that his letters, during that week, were to be delivered at the farm instead of at the Rectory.
Lee finally got through his work, all but this one letter for the parson, and turned his steps our way. As ill-luck had it—the poor fellow thought it so afterwards—he could not take the short and sheltered way through Crabb Ravine, for he had letters that morning to Sir Robert Tenby, at Bellwood, and also for the Stone House on the way to it. By the time he turned on the solitary road that led to Crabb, Lee was nearly blown to smithereens by the fierce north-east wind, and chilled to the marrow. All his bones ached; he felt low, frozen, ill, and wondered whether he should get over the ground without breaking down.
“I wish I might have a whiff at my pipe!”
A pipe is to many people the panacea for all earthly discomfort; it was so to Lee. But only in the previous February had occurred that damage to Helen Whitney’s letter, when she was staying with us, which the authorities had made much of; and Lee was afraid to risk a similar mishap again. He carried Salmon’s general orders with him: not to smoke during his round. Once the letters were delivered, he might do so.
His weak grey hair blowing about, his thin and shrunken frame shivering and shaking as the blasts took him, his empty post-bag thrust into his pocket, and the Rector of Timberdale’s letter in his hand, Lee toiled along on his weary way. To a strong man the walk would have been nothing, and not much to Lee in fairer weather. It was the cold and wind that tired him. And though, after giving vent to the above wish, he held out a little while, presently he could resist the comfort no longer, but drew forth his pipe and struck a match to light it.
How it occurred he never knew, never knew to his dying day, but the flame from the match caught the letter, and set it alight. It was that thin foreign paper that catches so quickly, and the match was obstinate, and the wind blew the flame about. He pressed the fire out with his hands, but a portion of the letter was burnt.
If Timbuctoo, or some other far-away place had been within the distance of a man’s legs, Lee would have made straight off for it. His pipe on the ground, the burnt letter underneath his horrified gaze, and his hair raised on end, stood he. What on earth should he do? It had been only a pleasant young lady’s letter last time, and only a little scorched; now it was the stern Rector’s.
There was but one thing he could do—go on with the letter to its destination. It often happens in these distressing catastrophes that the one only course open is the least palatable. His pipe hidden away in his pocket—for Lee had had enough of it for that morning—and the damaged letter humbly held out in his hand, Lee made his approach to the farm.
I chanced to be standing at its door with Tom Coney and Tod. Those two were going out shooting, and the Squire had sent me running across the road with a message to them. Lee came up, and, with a face that seemed greyer than usual, and a voice from which most of its sound had departed, he told his tale.
Tom Coney gave a whistle. “Oh, by George, Lee, won’t you catch it! The Rector——”
“The Rector’s a regular martinet, you know,” Tom Coney was about to add, but he was stopped by the appearance of the Rector himself.
Herbert Tanerton had chanced to be in the little oak-panelled hall, and caught the drift of the tale. A frown sat on his cold face as he came forward, a frown that would have befitted an old face better than a young one.
He was not loud. He did not fly into a passion as Helen Whitney did. He just took the unfortunate letter in his hand, and looked at it, and looked at Lee, and spoke quietly and coldly.
“This is, I believe, the second time you have burnt the letters?” and Lee dared not deny it.
“And in direct defiance of orders. You are not allowed to smoke when on your rounds.”
“I’ll never attempt to smoke again, when on my round, as long as I live, sir, if you’ll only be pleased to look over it this time,” gasped Lee, holding up his hands in a piteous way. But the Rector was one who went in for “duty,” and the appeal found no favour with him.
“No,” said he, “it would be to encourage wrong-doing, Lee. Meet me at eleven o’clock at Salmon’s.”
“Never again, sir, so long as I live!” pleaded Lee. “I’ll give you my word of that, sir; and I never broke it yet. Oh, sir, if you will but have pity upon me and not report me!”
“At eleven o’clock,” repeated Herbert Tanerton decisively, as he turned indoors again.
“What an old stupid you must be!” cried Tod to Lee. “He won’t excuse you; he’s the wrong sort of parson to do it.”
“And a pretty kettle of fish you’ve made of it,” added Tom Coney. “I wouldn’t have minded much, had it been my letter; but he is different, you know.”
Poor Lee turned his eyes on me: perhaps remembering that he had asked me, the other time, to stand his friend with Miss Whitney. No one could be his friend now: when the Rector took up a grievance he did not let it drop again; especially if it were his own. Good-hearted Jack, his sailor-brother, would have screened Lee, though all the letters in the parish had got burnt.
At eleven o’clock precisely the Reverend Herbert Tanerton entered Salmon’s shop; and poor Lee, not daring to disobey his mandate, crept in after him. They had it out in the room behind. Salmon was properly severe; told Lee he was not sure but the offence involved penal servitude, and that he deserved hanging. A prosperous tradesman in his small orbit, the man was naturally inclined to be dictatorial, and was ambitious of standing well with his betters, especially the Rector. Lee was suspended there and then; and Spicer was informed that for a time, until other arrangements were made, he must do double duty. Spicer, vexed at this, for it would take him so much the more time from his legitimate business, that of horse doctor, told Lee he was a fool, and deserved not only hanging but drawing and quartering.
“What’s up?” asked Ben Rymer, crossing the road from his own shop to accost Lee, as the latter came out of Salmon’s. Ben was the chemist now—had been since Margaret’s marriage—and was steady; and Ben, it was said, would soon pass his examination for surgeon. He had his hands in his pockets and his white apron on, for Mr. Ben Rymer had no false pride, and would as soon show himself to Timberdale in an apron as in a dress-coat.
Lee told his tale, confessing the sin of the morning. Mr. Rymer nodded his head significantly several times as he heard it, and pushed his red hair from his capacious forehead.
“They won’t look over it this time, Lee.”
“If I could but get some one to be my friend with the Rector, and ask him to forgive me,” said Lee. “Had your father been alive, Mr. Rymer, I think he would have done it for me.”
“Very likely. No good to ask me—if that’s what you are hinting at. The Rector looks upon me as a black sheep, and turns on me the cold shoulder. But I don’t think he is one to listen, Lee, though the king came to ask him.”
“What I shall do I don’t know,” bewailed Lee. “If the place is stopped, the pay stops, and I’ve not another shilling in the world, or the means of earning one. My wife’s ailing, and Mamie gets worse day by day; and there are the two little ones. They are all upon me.”
“Some people here say, Lee, that you should have sent Mamie and her young one to the workhouse, and not have charged yourself with them.”
“True, sir, several have told me that. But people don’t know what a father’s feelings are till they experience them. Mary was my own child that I had dandled on my knee, and watched grow up in her pretty ways, and I was fonder of her than of any earthly thing. The workhouse might not have taken her in.”
“She has forfeited all claim on you. And come home only to break your heart.”
“True,” meekly assented Lee. “But the Lord has told us we are to forgive, not seven times, but seventy times seven. If I had turned her adrift from my door and heart, sir, who knows but I might have been turned adrift myself at the Last Day.”
Evidently it was of no use talking to one so unreasonable as Lee. And Mr. Ben Rymer went back to his shop. A customer was entering it with a prescription and a medicine-bottle.
One morning close upon Christmas, Mrs. Todhetley despatched me to Timberdale through the snow for a box of those delectable “Household Pills,” which have been mentioned before: an invention of the late Mr. Rymer’s, and continued to be made up by Ben. Ben was behind the counter as usual when I entered, and shook the snow off my boots on the door-mat.
“Anything else?” he asked me presently, wrapping up the box.
“Not to-day. There goes old Lee! How thin he looks!”
“Starvation,” said Ben, craning his long neck to look between the coloured globes at Lee on the other side the way. “Lee has nothing coming in now.”
“What do they all live upon?”
“Goodness knows. Upon things that he pledges, and the vegetables in the garden. I was in there last night, and I can tell you it was a picture, Mr. Johnny Ludlow.”
“A picture of what?”
“Misery: distress: hopelessness. It is several weeks now since Lee earned anything, and they have been all that time upon short commons. Some days on no commons at all, I expect.”
“But what took you there?”
“I heard such an account of the girl—Mamie—yesterday afternoon, of her cough and her weakness, that I thought I’d see if any of my drugs would do her good. But it’s food they all want.”
“Is Mamie very ill?”
“Very ill indeed. I’m not sure but she’s dying.”
“It is a dreadful thing.”
“One can’t ask too many professional questions—people are down upon you for that before you have passed,” resumed Ben, alluding to his not being qualified. “But I sent her in a cordial or two, and I spoke to Darbyshire; so perhaps he will look in upon her to-day.”
Ben Rymer might have been a black sheep once upon a time, but he had not a bad heart. I began wondering whether Mrs. Todhetley could help them.
“Is Mamie Lee still able to do any sewing?”
“About as much as I could do it. Not she. I shall hear what Darbyshire’s report is. They would certainly be better off in the workhouse.”
“I wish they could be helped!”
“Not much chance of that,” said Ben. “She is a sinner, and he is a sinner: that’s what Timberdale says, you know. People in these enlightened days are so very self-righteous!”
“How is Lee a sinner?”
“How! Why, has he not burnt up the people’s letters? Mr. Tanerton leads the van in banning him, and Timberdale follows.”
I went home, questioning whether our folk would do anything to help the Lees. No one went on against ill-doings worse than the Squire; and no one was more ready than he to lend a helping hand when the ill-doers were fainting for want of it.
It chanced that just about the time I was talking to Ben Rymer, Mr. Darbyshire, the doctor at Timberdale, called at Lee’s. He was a little, dark man, with an irritable temper and a turned-up nose, but good as gold at heart. Mamie Lee lay back in a chair, her head on a pillow, weak and wan and weary, the tears slowly rolling down her cheeks. Darbyshire was feeling her pulse, and old Mrs. Lee pottered about, bringing sticks from the garden to feed the handful of fire. The two children sat on the brick floor.
“If it were not for leaving my poor little one, I should be glad to die, sir,” she was saying. “I shall be glad to go; hope it is not wrong to say it. She and I have been a dreadful charge upon them here.”
Darbyshire looked round the kitchen. It was almost bare; the things had gone to the pawnbroker’s. Then he looked at her.
“There’s no need for you to die yet. Don’t get that fallacy in your head. You’ll come round fast enough with a little care.”
“No, sir, I’m afraid not; I think I am past it. It has all come of the trouble, sir; and perhaps, when I’m gone, the neighbours will judge me more charitably. I believed with all my heart it was a true marriage—and I hope you’ll believe me when I say it, sir; it never came into my mind to imagine otherwise. And I’d have thought the whole world would have deceived me sooner than James.”
“Ah,” says Darbyshire, “most girls think that. Well, I’ll send you in some physic to soothe the pain in the chest. But what you most want, you see, is kitchen physic.”