A Sheaf of Corn Part 44

"No!"

"Oh, love! Are you certain? Will you swear it?"

"I swear it," said the m.u.f.fled voice.

"Why are you so sure? Why? Oh, tell me! Listen: she said she died by her own hand."

"A lie. It is a lie. I killed her."

Hours later, the light of morning, outshining the electric light, found the woman, the heavily slumbering man beside her, gazing, with a stricken face and eyes which looked as if sleep had been banished from them for ever, upon the new, unwelcome day.

Brightly the rays of the ascending sun struck upon the silver-framed portrait on the dressing-table, upon the smiling presentment of the fatuous-faced, shallow-eyed, dead wife.

THE EXCELLENT JOYS OF YOUTH

"No head without its nimbus of gold-coloured light."

He had that delicately tinted infantine complexion which only accompanies red hair; his eyes were brightly blue; his features well chiselled, with the exception of the lips, which were clumsily cut and loosely held together. He came down to breakfast in a not very agreeable mood, for he had been drinking for the last week, and this was the first time he had been thoroughly sober for that period. His head ached, his tongue was hot and leathery; he kept his hands in his trousers-pockets because they shook heavily, and he did not want the lodging-house servant to see.

The pockets were quite empty. He could not tell where the last few pounds had gone--if he had lost them at that game of poker he remembered playing before he fell asleep, or if they had been stolen since. He did not remember, and it would be worse than useless to inquire. Not a penny was left to him, and he had not a notion where a penny was to come from--even to pay for the breakfast which he had no appet.i.te to eat.

With a heavy gloom upon his face, he stood and looked at the meal spread for him for several minutes before he sat down to table. There was smoked haddock, and he shook his head at it; scrambled eggs, and having looked at the dish he hastily covered it from sight. Beneath the sideboard a few bottles of soda-water were lying. He opened one, and, there being no gla.s.s at hand, poured the contents into his breakfast-cup, then drank with a thirst which threatened the cup as well as what it held.

Then he sat down to the table and stared at his reflection in the teapot.

"G.o.d! What a fool I've been," he said. "And what the devil am I to do now?"

Two or three letters lay beside his plate; he flicked them apart with his shaking finger. "Bills--bills--bills!" he said. "All bills!"

Unopened, he chucked them one by one into the fire, but stopped at the last. "A lawyer's fist," he said, regarding the ominously legal-looking hand-writing. "Someone threatening proceedings again. Let 'em proceed!"

He was about to throw that communication also in the fire, but paused in the act, and laid it down by his plate again, putting another plate on the top of it to conceal it from his sight.

He took up the knife, old and worn and sharpened at the point, which lay by the loaf of bread, and looked at its edge.

"This is how poor old Fleming got out of the sc.r.a.pe," he said. "And Fleming wasn't in a worse hole than I am."

But he turned the knife upon the bread instead of his own throat, and having begun with an expression of distaste upon the salt fish, his appet.i.te arrived with eating, and, that dish disposed of, he attacked the b.u.t.tered eggs, and found himself in a fair way to make a good meal.

For, in spite of his intemperate habits, he had an invariably good appet.i.te--an almost indomitable cheerfulness also. The inability to take himself and his misfortunes seriously had been at the bottom of all his failures. With his family history and his temperament he was foreordained to disaster; but he met it smiling, with the courage which was more the outcome of indifference than of heroism.

"Which is the way to the workhouse, Polly?" he inquired of the little lodging-house servant who came to clear the table.

He had filled his pipe and had turned his chair to the fire. His blue eyes shone as brightly, his red hair was watered as carefully free of curl, his person was as neat and spruce and daintily cared for as if he had been the most immaculate of mothers' sons.

Polly, at her first place, and with an unbounded admiration and regard for the lodger who, if he did make a sight of work splashing about in his bath, was always free with his shillings and full of his fun, looked at the young man distrustfully.

"What you got to do wi' th' work'us?" Polly asked resentfully, and seized the bread under one arm and the remains of the haddock under the other.

"If folks have no money and don't want to starve, what do they do?" he asked, puffing at his pipe.

"They work," said Polly, laconically; pushed open the door with her foot, deposited the dishes in the yard-wide hall beyond, and returned for the rest of the breakfast-things.

"They work if they're lucky and born poor," he said. "But if they're like me they can't work, Polly, because they don't know how, and no one will give them the chance to learn. No. It'll have to be the workhouse, my good girl."

Upon which Polly snuffled loudly, and her tears fell--splash--upon the plates she was carrying away. It was not the first time that the workhouse had been threatened; the dread of her life was that the threat should be carried into effect. So she cried, and her poor little red hands shook as she shuffled the plates together.

"Here's a letter," she snuffled.

"Fling it on the fire, Polly."

"'Tain't opened. I 'ont, then. You should ope your letters."

"Open it for me, then."

So the little maid-of-all work opened, and, in obedience to his orders, she being a sixth-standard scholar, and not stumbling once at a hard word, read the letter.

And as she read, the young man sat upright in his chair, pulled the pipe from lips which had fallen open in astonishment, and fixed unblinking eyes of innocent blue upon the handmaiden.

For in legal phraseology, the sense of which, if not the words, was a sore stumbling-block to Polly, the letter set forth that by the death of a certain James Playford, legatee under the will of Mr Daniel Thrower's uncle, a sum of money had been released which now, according to the said will, was to be divided between the said uncle's nephews and nieces. Due deduction having been made for this and that, Mr Daniel Thrower's share was found to amount to the sum of 98, 17s. 6d., for which a cheque was herewith enclosed.

"Do you mean to say he's sent the money?" Mr Daniel Thrower demanded, in the accents of incredulity.

"There ain't no money--not a farden--only a bit o' paper," Polly said, with disappointment.

Dan seized the cheque from her hand. "All right!" he said; "I shan't go to that inst.i.tution we spoke of just yet, Polly. We've got another chance, my girl."

Truth to say, he had had several in his life, but this seemed to him the happiest which had ever befallen. After each drunken outburst he made resolution that it should be the last, and remained a strictly temperate person till the madness seized him again. The resolution he made as he sat gazing at the cheque he held in his hand, being the last, was the one he meant to keep. Years ago an elder brother had gone out to New South Wales, had bought some land there, and had prospered.

He was not a very sympathetic brother, and had not responded to the suggestion that the ungain-doing Dan should take himself, his bad fortune, his unsatisfactory habits, also to New South Wales to settle down beside him.

Dan was of opinion, however, that, once there, this brother would find a difficulty in getting rid of him. He thought with longing of that clean and healthy life, the escape from the slough into which his feet would always wander while he remained here. The means to escape he now held in his hand!

"Here I keep on sinking, sinking!" Dan said to himself, ill.u.s.trating the process with a movement of the hand which held the cheque.

"Bill--he's as hard as nails, but he'll hold me up. I shall begin over again. I shall be free of this infernal embroglio. I shall write my name on a clean page----"

He would not stop to repent; he would look out the first steamer that sailed; he would pay his debts--they were not, after all, many, for he had a const.i.tutional objection to cheating people, and always paid when he could. He would say good-bye to the man for whose friendship's sake he had come here, and would shake the dust of the miserable little town where he had played the fool of late from his feet. It was three or four days, he remembered, since he had seen the friend of whom he thought; he would have news to take him now! So slipping the letter which contained the cheque into his pocket, he walked out into the April sunshine of the little High Street, and betook himself to Gunton's lodgings.

Gunton was the not altogether satisfactory a.s.sistant to the one doctor in the place. Going thus early, he would catch him before he started on his rounds.

No need to hurry, Dan! Before the good people of Hayford shall see again the young doctor flying round on his long legs to visit the pauper patients, or clattering in Doctor Owen's tall gig over the cobblestones of the High Street on his way to those invalids of least consideration entrusted to his care, the last trump shall sound.

He was not in the little sitting-room where Dan and he had smoked so many pipes together. The visitor was striding across the pa.s.sage to the bedroom, also on the ground-floor, when the landlady issued therefrom; and the landlady was in tears.