Clara Hopgood Part 8

'Oh, yes.'

'That's a marcy; well then, my dear, you shall go back in the cart to Letherhead, and you'll catch the Darkin coach to London.'

'You have been very good to me; what have I to pay you?'

'Pay? Nothing! why, if I was to let you pay, it would just look as if I'd trapped you here to get something out of you. Pay! no, not a penny.'

'I can afford very well to pay, but if it vexes you I will not offer anything. I don't know how to thank you enough.'

Madge took Mrs Caffyn's hand in hers and pressed it firmly.

'Besides, my dear,' said Mrs Caffyn, smoothing the sheets a little, 'you won't mind my saying it, I expex you are in trouble. There's something on your mind, and I believe as I knows pretty well what it is.'

Madge turned round in the bed so as no longer to face the light; Mrs Caffyn sat between her and the window.

'Look you here, my dear; don't you suppose I meant to say anything to hurt you. The moment I looked on you I was drawed to you like; I couldn't help it. I see'd what was the matter, but I was all the more drawed, and I just wanted you to know as it makes no difference.

That's like me; sometimes I'm drawed that way and sometimes t'other way, and it's never no use for me to try to go against it. I ain't a-going to say anything more to you; G.o.d-A'mighty, He's above us all; but p'r'aps you may be comm' this way again some day, and then you'll look in.'

Madge turned again to the light, and again caught Mrs Caffyn's hand, but was silent.

The next morning, after Madge's return, Mrs Cork, the landlady, presented herself at the sitting-room door and 'wished to speak with Mrs Hopgood for a minute.'

'Come in, Mrs Cork.'

'Thank you, ma'am, but I prefer as you should come downstairs.'

Mrs Cork was about forty, a widow with no children. She had a face of which it was impossible to recollect, when it had been seen even a dozen times, any feature except the eyes, which were steel-blue, a little bluer than the faceted head of the steel poker in her parlour, but just as hard. She lived in the bas.e.m.e.nt with a maid, much like herself but a little more human. Although the front underground room was furnished Mrs Cork never used it, except on the rarest occasions, and a kind of ap.r.o.n of coloured paper hung over the fireplace nearly all the year. She was a woman of what she called regular habits. No lodger was ever permitted to transgress her rules, or to have meals ten minutes before or ten minutes after the appointed time. She had undoubtedly been married, but who Cork could have been was a marvel.

Why he died, and why there were never any children were no marvels.

At two o'clock her grate was screwed up to the narrowest possible dimensions, and the ashes, potato peelings, tea leaves and cabbage stalks were thrown on the poor, struggling coals. No meat, by the way, was ever roasted--it was considered wasteful--everything was baked or boiled. After half-past four not a bit of anything that was not cold was allowed till the next morning, and, indeed, from the first of April to the thirty-first of October the fire was raked out the moment tea was over. Mrs Hopgood one night was not very well and Clara wished to give her mother something warm. She rang the bell and asked for hot water. Maria came up and disappeared without a word after receiving the message. Presently she returned.

'Mrs Cork, miss, wishes me to tell you as it was never understood as 'ot water would be required after tea, and she hasn't got any.'

Mrs Hopgood had a fire, although it was not yet the thirty-first of October, for it was very damp and raw. She had with much difficulty induced Mrs Cork to concede this favour (which probably would not have been granted if the coals had not yielded a profit of threepence a scuttleful), and Clara, therefore, asked if she could not have the kettle upstairs. Again Maria disappeared and returned.

'Mrs Cork says, miss, as it's very ill-convenient as the kettle is cleaned up agin to-morrow, and if you can do without it she will be obliged.'

It was of no use to continue the contest, and Clara bethought herself of a little 'Etna' she had in her bedroom. She went to the druggist's, bought some methylated spirit, and obtained what she wanted.

Mrs Cork had one virtue and one weakness. Her virtue was cleanliness, but she persecuted the 'blacks,' not because she objected to dirt as dirt, but because it was unauthorised, appeared without permission at irregular hours, and because the glittering polish on varnished paint and red mahogany was a pleasure to her.

She liked the dirt, too, in a way, for she enjoyed the exercise of her ill-temper on it and the pursuit of it to destruction. Her weakness was an enormous tom-cat which had a bell round its neck and slept in a basket in the kitchen, the best-behaved and most moral cat in the parish. At half-past nine every evening it was let out into the back-yard and vanished. At ten precisely it was heard to mew and was immediately admitted. Not once in a twelvemonth did that cat prolong its love making after five minutes to ten.

Mrs Hopgood went upstairs to her room, Mrs Cork following and closing the door.

'If you please, ma'am, I wish to give you notice to leave this day week.'

'What is the matter, Mrs Cork?'

'Well, ma'am, for one thing, I didn't know as you'd bring a bird with you.'

It was a pet bird belonging to Madge.

'But what harm does the bird do? It gives no trouble; my daughter attends to it.'

'Yes, ma'am, but it worrits my Joseph--the cat, I mean. I found him the other mornin' on the table eyin' it, and I can't a-bear to see him urritated.'

'I should hardly have thought that a reason for parting with good lodgers.'

Mrs Hopgood had intended to move, as before explained, but she did not wish to go till the three months had expired.

'I don't say as that is everything, but if you wish me to tell you the truth, Miss Madge is not a person as I like to keep in the house.

I wish you to know'--Mrs Cork suddenly became excited and venomous-- 'that I'm a respectable woman, and have always let my apartments to respectable people, and do you think I should ever let them to respectable people again if it got about as I had had anybody as wasn't respectable? Where was she last night? And do you suppose as me as has been a married woman can't see the condition she's in? I say as you, Mrs Hopgood, ought to be ashamed of yourself for bringing of such a person into a house like mine, and you'll please vacate these premises on the day named.' She did not wait for an answer, but banged the door after her, and went down to her subterranean den.

Mrs Hopgood did not tell her children the true reason for leaving.

She merely said that Mrs Cork had been very impertinent, and that they must look out for other rooms. Madge instantly recollected Great Ormond Street, but she did not know the number, and oddly enough she had completely forgotten Mrs Caffyn's name. It was a peculiar name, she had heard it only once, she had not noticed it over the door, and her exhaustion may have had something to do with her loss of memory. She could not therefore write, and Mrs Hopgood determined that she herself would go to Great Oakhurst. She had another reason for her journey. She wished her kind friend there to see that Madge had really a mother who cared for her. She was anxious to confirm Madge's story, and Mrs Caffyn's confidence. Clara desired to go also, but Mrs Hopgood would not leave Madge alone, and the expense of a double fare was considered unnecessary.

When Mrs Hopgood came to Letherhead on her return, the coach was full inside, and she was obliged to ride outside, although the weather was cold and threatening. In about half an hour it began to rain heavily, and by the time she was in Pentonville she was wet through.

The next morning she ought to have lain in bed, but she came down at her accustomed hour as Mrs Cork was more than usually disagreeable, and it was settled that they would leave at once if the rooms in Great Ormond Street were available. Clara went there directly after breakfast, and saw Mrs Marshall, who had already received an introductory letter from her mother.

CHAPTER XIV

The Marshall family included Marshall and his wife. He was rather a small man, with blackish hair, small lips, and with a nose just a little turned up at the tip. As we have been informed, he was a cabinet-maker. He worked for very good shops, and earned about two pounds a week. He read books, but he did not know their value, and often fancied he had made a great discovery on a bookstall of an author long ago superseded and worthless. He belonged to a mechanic's inst.i.tute, and was fond of animal physiology; heard courses of lectures on it at the inst.i.tute, and had studied two or three elementary handbooks. He found in a second-hand dealer's shop a model, which could be taken to pieces, of the inside of the human body. He had also bought a diagram of a man, showing the circulation, and this he had hung in his bedroom, his mother-in-law objecting most strongly on the ground that its effect on his wife was injurious. He had a notion that the world might be regenerated if men and women were properly instructed in physiological science, and if before marriage they would study their own physical peculiarities, and those of their intended partners. The crossing of peculiarities nevertheless presented difficulties. A man with long legs surely ought to choose a woman with short legs, but if a man who was mathematical married a woman who was mathematical, the result might be a mathematical prodigy. On the other hand the parents of the prodigy might each have corresponding qualities, which, mixed with the mathematical tendency, would completely nullify it. The path of duty therefore was by no means plain. However, Marshall was sure that great cities dwarfed their inhabitants, and as he himself was not so tall as his father, and, moreover, suffered from bad digestion, and had a tendency to 'run to head,' he determined to select as his wife a 'daughter of the soil,' to use his own phrase, above the average height, with a vigorous const.i.tution and plenty of common sense. She need not be bookish, 'he could supply all that himself.' Accordingly, he married Sarah Caffyn. His mother and Mrs Caffyn had been early friends. He was not mistaken in Sarah. She was certainly robust; she was a shrewd housekeeper, and she never read anything, except now and then a paragraph or two in the weekly newspaper, notwithstanding (for there were no children), time hung rather heavily on her hands. One child had been born, but to Marshall's surprise and disappointment it was a poor, rickety thing, and died before it was a twelvemonth old.

Mrs Marshall was not a very happy woman. Marshall was a great politician and spent many of his evenings away from home at political meetings. He never informed her what he had been doing, and if he had told her, she would neither have understood nor cared anything about it. At Great Oakhurst she heard everything and took an interest in it, and she often wished with all her heart that the subject which occupied Marshall's thoughts was not Chartism but the draining of that heavy, rush-grown bit of rough pasture that lay at the bottom of the village. He was very good and kind to her, and she never imagined, before marriage, that he ought to be more. She was sure that at Great Oakhurst she would have been quite comfortable with him but somehow, in London, it was different. 'I don't know how it is,' she said one day, 'the sort of husband as does for the country doesn't do for London.'

At Great Oakhurst, where the doors were always open into the yard and the garden, where every house was merely a covered bit of the open s.p.a.ce, where people were always in and out, and women never sat down, except to their meals, or to do a little st.i.tching or sewing, it was really not necessary, as Mrs Caffyn observed, that husband and wife should 'hit it so fine.' Mrs Marshall hated all the conveniences of London. She abominated particularly the taps, and longed to be obliged in all weathers to go out to the well and wind up the bucket.

She abominated also the dust-bin, for it was a pleasure to be compelled--so at least she thought it now--to walk down to the muck- heap and throw on it what the pig could not eat. Nay, she even missed that corner of the garden against the elder-tree, where the pig-stye was, for 'you could smell the elder-flowers there in the spring-time, and the pig-stye wasn't as bad as the stuffy back room in Great Ormond Street when three or four men were in it.' She did all she could to spend her energy on her cooking and cleaning, but 'there was no satisfaction in it,' and she became much depressed, especially after the child died. This was the main reason why Mrs Caffyn determined to live with her. Marshall was glad she resolved to come. His wife had her full share of the common sense he desired, but the experiment had not altogether succeeded. He knew she was lonely, and he was sorry for her, although he did not see how he could mend matters. He reflected carefully, nothing had happened which was a surprise to him, the relationship was what he had supposed it would be, excepting that the child did not live and its mother was a little miserable. There was nothing he would not do for her, but he really had nothing more to offer her.

Although Mrs Marshall had made up her mind that husbands and wives could not be as contented with one another in the big city as they would be in a village, a suspicion crossed her mind one day that, even in London, the relationship might be different from her own.

She was returning from Great Oakhurst after a visit to her mother.

She had stayed there for about a month after her child's death, and she travelled back to town with a Letherhead woman, who had married a journeyman tanner, who formerly worked in the Letherhead tan-yard, and had now moved to Bermondsey, a horrid hole, worse than Great Ormond Street. Both Marshall and the tanner were at the 'Swan with Two Necks' to meet the covered van, and the tanner's wife jumped out first.

'Hullo, old gal, here you are,' cried the tanner, and clasped her in his brown, bark-stained arms, giving her, nothing loth, two or three hearty kisses. They were so much excited at meeting one another, that they forgot their friends, and marched off without bidding them good-bye. Mrs Marshall was welcomed in quieter fashion.

'Ah!' she thought to herself. 'Red Tom,' as the tanner was called, 'is not used to London ways. They are, perhaps, correct for London, but Marshall might now and then remember that I have not been brought up to them.'

To return, however, to the Hopgoods. Before the afternoon they were in their new quarters, happily for them, for Mrs Hopgood became worse. On the morrow she was seriously ill, inflammation of the lungs appeared, and in a week she was dead. What Clara and Madge suffered cannot be told here. Whenever anybody whom we love dies, we discover that although death is commonplace it is terribly original.

We may have thought about it all our lives, but if it comes close to us, it is quite a new, strange thing to us, for which we are entirely unprepared. It may, perhaps, not be the bare loss so much as the strength of the bond which is broken that is the surprise, and we are debtors in a way to death for revealing something in us which ordinary life disguises. Long after the first madness of their grief had pa.s.sed, Clara and Madge were astonished to find how dependent they had been on their mother. They were grown-up women accustomed to act for themselves, but they felt unsteady, and as if deprived of customary support. The reference to her had been constant, although it was often silent, and they were not conscious of it. A defence from the outside waste desert had been broken down, their mother had always seemed to intervene between them and the world, and now they were exposed and shelterless.

Three parts of Mrs Hopgood's little income was mainly an annuity, and Clara and Madge found that between them they had but seventy-five pounds a year.

CHAPTER XV