Johnny Ludlow Third Series Part 48

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

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

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

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

She had grown so thin as hardly to be able to keep her clothes upon her.

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

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

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

"Tatty dere, mov'er," began the eldest, who was extremely backward in speaking.

"Tatty dere" meant "Cathy's there;" and the mother looked up from the bacon. Cathy Parrifer (though n.o.body called her by her new name, but Cathy Reed still) stood at the outer gate, in tatters as usual, talking to some man who had a paper in his hand. Mrs. Reed's heart leaped into her mouth: she lived in dread of everything. A stranger approaching the place turned her sick. And now the terror, whose shadow had been so long looming, was come in reality. Catherine came bounding up the garden to tell the tale: the man, standing at the gate, was waiting to see her father come home to dinner to serve him with a summons for the county court. Mrs. Reed knew at once what it was for: the eight-and-twenty shillings owing at the general shop. Her face grew white as she sank into a chair.

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

"He won't," answered Cathy. "He means to give that to father personally, he says, if he stays till night."

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

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

But the man at the gate began to smell a rat; perhaps the bacon as well.

Dinner-hour almost over, and no George Reed had come home! He suddenly thought of the back-entrance, and walked up the front-path to see. Paper in hand, he gave a thump at the house-door. Reed was about to leave then: and he went down the path by the man's side, opening the paper.

Mrs. Reed, more like a ghost than a woman, took a glance through the window.

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

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

"But where are you going?" cried the wondering Cathy.

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

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

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

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

We were at home again for the holidays, and I had been over for an afternoon to the Stirlings'. Events in this world happen very strangely.

Upon setting out to walk back in the cool of the late summer's evening, I took the way by d.y.k.e Brook instead of either of the two ordinary roads. Why I chose it I did not know then; I do not now; I never shall know. When fairly launched into the fields, I asked myself why on earth I had come that way, for it was the loneliest to be found in the two counties.

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

"Halloa, Mrs. Reed! Is that you?"

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

"What is it?" I asked, standing before her.

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

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

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

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

"Now, Mrs. Reed! Do you suppose you would be at _rest_?"

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

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

"I've not a friend in the whole world that could help me," she said.

"But it's not that, Master Johnny; it's the shame on me for having brought things to such a pa.s.s. If the Lord would but be pleased to take me, and save me from the sin of lifting a hand against my own life!"

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

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

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

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

She looked up, more helpless than before. "There ain't nothing to be done for me, Master Johnny. There's the shame, and the talkin' o' the neighbours----"

"Yes, you need mind _that_. Why, the neighbours are all in the same boat!"

"And there's Reed, sir; he'd never forgive me. He'd----"

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

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

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

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

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

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