Friends I Have Made Part 6

"Yes," I says, "to living in Bennett's Place, where I've sunk no less than ten machines in five years."

"Yes," says the wife, "and cleared hundreds of pounds. Tom, I'm ashamed of you--you a man with twenty workmen busy upstairs, a couple of thousand pounds' worth of stock, and in the bank--"

"Hold your tongue, will you!" I said roughly, and went out into the shop to try and work it all off.

Luke came back just after, looking very strange, and I was at him directly.

"Where's the seven and six," I said, angrily.

He didn't answer, but put three half-crowns down on the desk, took out the book, made his entries--date of delivery, first payment, when the other's due, and all the rest of it--and was then going into the house.

"Mind," I says, sharply, "those payments are to be kept up to the day; and to-morrow you go to Rollys, who live nearly opposite to 'em, and tell 'em to keep an eye on the widow, or we shall lose another machine."

"You needn't be afraid, father," he says coldly; "they're honest enough, only poor."

I was just in that humour that I wanted to quarrel with somebody, and that did it.

"When I ask you for your opinion, young man, you give it me; and when I tell you to do a thing, you do it," I says, in as savage a way as ever I spoke to the lad. "You go over to-morrow and tell Rollys to keep a strict look-out on those people--do you hear?"

"Father," he says, looking me full in the face, "I couldn't insult them by doing such a thing," when without another word he walked quietly out of the shop, leaving me worse than ever.

For that boy had never spoken to me like that before, and I should have gone after him feeling mad like, only some people came in, and I didn't see him again till evening, and a good thing too, for I'm sure I should have said all sorts of things to the boy, that I should have been sorry for after. And there I was fuming and fretting about, savage with everybody, giving short answers, snapping at the wife, and feeling as a man does feel when he knows that he has been in the wrong and hasn't the heart to go and own it.

It was about eight o'clock that I was sitting by the parlour fire, with the wife working and very quiet, when Luke came in from the workshop with a book under his arm, for he had been totting up the men's piecework, and what was due to them; and the sight of him made me feel as if I must quarrel.

He saw it too, but he said nothing, only put the accounts away and began to read.

The wife saw the storm brewing, and she knew how put out I was, for I had not lit my pipe, nor yet had my evening nap, which I always have after tea. So she did what she knew so well how to do--filled my pipe, forced it into my hand, and just as I was going to dash it to pieces in the ashes, she gave me one of her old looks, kissed me on the forehead, as with one hand she pressed me back into my chair, and then with the other she lit a splint and held it to my tobacco.

I was done. She always gets over me like that; and after smoking in silence for half-an-hour, I was lying back, with my eyes closed, dropping off to sleep, when my wife said--what had gone before I hadn't heard--

"Yes, he's asleep now."

That woke me up of course, and if I didn't lie there shamming and heard all they said in a whisper!

"How came you to make him more vexed than he was, Luke?" says the wife; and he told her.

"I couldn't do it, mother," he said, excitedly. "It was heart-breaking.

She's living in a wretched room there with her daughter; and, mother, when I saw her I felt as if--there, I can't tell you."

"Go on, Luke," she said.

"They're half-starved," he said in a husky way. "Oh, mother! it's horrible. Such a sweet, beautiful girl, and the poor woman herself dying almost with some terrible disease."

The wife sighed.

"They told me," he went on, "how hard they had tried to live by ordinary needlework, and failed, and that as a last resource they had tried to get the machine."

"Poor things!" says the wife; "but are you sure the mother was a lady?"

"A clergyman's widow," says Luke hastily; "there isn't a doubt about it.

Poor girl! and they've got to learn to use it before it will be of any use."

"Poor _girl_, Luke?" says the wife softly; and I saw through my eyelashes that she laid a hand upon his arm, and was looking curiously at him, when if he didn't cover his face with his hands, rest his elbows on the table, and give a low groan! Then the old woman got up, stood behind his chair, and began playing with and caressing his hair like the foolish old mother would.

"Mother," he says suddenly, "will you go and see them?"

She didn't answer for a minute, only stood looking down at him, and then said softly--

"They paid you the first money?"

"No," he says hotly. "I hadn't the heart to take it."

"Then that money you paid was yours, Luke?"

"Yes, mother," he says simply; and those two stopped looking one at the another, till the wife bent down and kissed him, holding his head afterwards, for a few moments, between her hands; for she always did worship that chap, our only one; and then I closed my eyes tight, and went on breathing heavy and thinking.

For something like a new revelation had come upon me. I knew Luke was five-and-twenty, and that I was fifty-four, but he always seemed like a boy to me, and here was I waking up to the fact that he was a grown man, and that he was thinking and feeling as I first thought and felt when I saw his mother, nigh upon eight-and-twenty years ago.

I lay back, thinking and telling myself I was very savage with him for deceiving me, and that I wouldn't have him and his mother laying plots together against me, and that I wouldn't stand by and see him make a fool of himself with the first pretty girl he sets eyes on, when he might marry Maria Turner, the engineer's daughter, and have a nice bit of money with her, to put into the business, and then be my partner.

"No," I says; "if you plot together, I'll plot all alone," and then I pretended to wake up, took no notice, and had my supper.

I kept rather gruff the next morning, and made myself very busy about the place, and I dare say I spoke more sharply than usual, but the wife and Luke were as quiet as could be; and about twelve I went out, with a little oil-can and two or three tools in my pocket.

It was not far to Bennett's Place, and on getting to the right house I asked for Mrs Murray, and was directed to the second-floor, where, as I reached the door, I could hear the clicking of my sewing machine, and whoever was there was so busy over it that she did not hear me knock; so I opened the door softly, and looked in upon as sad a scene as I shall ever, I dare say, see.

There in the bare room sat, asleep in her chair, the widow lady who came about the machine, and I could see that in her face which told plainly enough that the pain and suffering she must have been going through for years would soon be over; and, situated as she was, it gave me a kind of turn.

"It's no business of yours," I said to myself roughly; and I turned then to look at who it was bending over my machine.

I could see no face, only a slight figure in rusty black; and a pair of busy white hands were trying very hard to govern the thing, and to learn how to use it well.

"So that's the gal, is it?" I said to myself. "Ah! Luke, my boy, you've got to the silly calf age, and I dare say--"

I got no farther, for at that moment the girl started, and turned upon me a timid, wondering face, that made my heart give a queer throb, and I couldn't take my eyes off her.

"Hush!" she said softly, holding up her hand; and I saw it was as thin and transparent as if she had been ill.

"My name's Smith," I said, taking out a screwdriver. "My machine: how does it go? Thought I'd come and see."

Her face lit up in a moment, and she came forward eagerly.

"I'm so glad you've come," she said, "I can't quite manage this."

She pointed to the thread regulator, and the next minute I was showing her that it was too tight, and somehow, in a gentle timid way, the little witch quite got over me, and I stopped there two hours helping her, till her eyes sparkled with delight, as she found out how easily she could now make the needle dart in and out of some hard material.

"Do you think you can do it now?" I said.