Johnny Ludlow First Series Part 69

"Where be your whiskers--and your hair?" burst forth Molly.

The man gazed at her for a minute or two, taking in the question gradually; he then raised his trembling hand to either side his face--feeling for the whiskers that were no longer there.

"A nice pot o' mischief _you_'ve been a getting into!" cried sharp Molly. "Is that your own coat? What's gone of the sleeves?"

For, now that the coat could be seen closely, it turned out that its sleeves had been cut out, leaving the bare white shirt-sleeves underneath. Roper looked first at one arm, then at the other.

"What part of Ameriky be you bound for, and when do the ship sail?"

pursued sarcastic Molly.

The man opened his mouth and closed it again; like a born natural, as Molly put it. Grizzel suddenly clung to him with a sobbing cry.

"He is ill, Molly; he's ill. He has had some trick played on him.

George, what be it?" But still George Roper only gazed about him as if too stupid to understand.

In short, the man _was_ stupid. That is, he had been stupefied, and as yet was only partially recovering its effects. He remembered going into the barber's shop on Sat.u.r.day night to have his hair cut, after leaving his bundle of clothes at the tailor's. Some ale was served round at the barber's, and he, Roper, took a gla.s.s. After that he remembered nothing: all was blank, until he woke up an hour ago in the unused shed at the back of the blacksmith's shop.

That the ale had been badly drugged, was evident. The question arose--who had played the trick? In a day or two, when Roper had recovered, an inquiry was set on foot: but nothing came of it. The barber testified that Roper seemed sleepy after the ale, and a joke went round that he must have been drinking some previously. He went out of the shop without having his hair cut, with several more men--and that was all the barber knew. Of course Sandy Lett was suspected. People said he had done it in hope to get himself subst.i.tuted as bridegroom. Lett, however, vowed through thick and thin that he was innocent; and nothing was traced home to him. Neither was the handwriting of the note.

They were married on the Thursday. Grizzel was too glad to get him back unharmed to make bones about the shorn whiskers. No difficulty was made about opening the church on a week-day. Clerk b.u.mford grumbled at it, but the parson put him down. And the blackberry pie served still for the wedding-dinner.

XVII.

BREAKING DOWN.

"Have him here a bit."

"Oh! But would you like it?"

"Like it?" retorted the Squire. "I know this: if I were a hard-worked London clerk, ill for want of change and rest, and I had friends living in a nice part of the country, I should feel it uncommonly hard if they did not invite me."

"I'm sure it is very kind of you to think of it," said Mrs. Todhetley.

"Write at once and ask him," said the Squire.

They were speaking of a Mr. Marks. He was a relation of Mrs.

Todhetley's; a second or third cousin. She had not seen him since she was a girl, when he used sometimes to come and stay at her father's. He seemed not to have got on very well in life; was only a clerk on a small salary, was married and had some children. A letter now and then pa.s.sed between them and Mrs. Todhetley, but no other acquaintanceship had been kept up. About a month before this, Mrs. Todhetley had written to ask how they were going on; and the wife in answering--for it was she who wrote--said her husband was killing himself with work, and she quite believed he would break down for good unless he had a rest.

We heard more about it later. James Marks was clerk in the great financial house of Brown and Co. Not particularly great as to reputation, for they made no noise in the world, but great as to their transactions. They did a little banking in a small way, and had mysterious money dealings with no end of foreign places: but if you had gone into their counting-house in London you'd have seen nothing to show for it, except Mr. Brown seated at a table-desk in a small room, and half-a-dozen clerks, or so, writing hard, or bending over columns of figures, in a larger one. Mr. Brown was an elderly little gentleman in a chestnut wig, and the "Co." existed only in name.

James Marks had been thrown on the world when he was seventeen, with a good education, good principles, and a great anxiety to get on in life.

He had to do it; for he had only himself to look to--and, mind you, I have lived long enough to learn that that's not at all the worst thing a young man can have. When some friends of his late father's got him into Brown and Co.'s house, James Marks thought his fortune was made. That is, he thought he was placed in a position to work up to one. But no.

Here he was, getting on for forty years of age, and with no more prospect of fortune, or competency either, than he had had at the beginning.

How many clerks, and especially bankers' clerks, are there in that City of London now who could say the same! Who went into their house (whatsoever it may be) in the hey-day of youth, exulting in their good luck in having obtained the admission for which so many others were striving. They saw not the long years of toil before them, the weary days of close work, with no rest or intermission, except Sunday; they saw not the struggle to live and pay; they saw not themselves middle-aged men, with a wife and family, hardly able to keep the wolf from the door. It was James Marks's case. He had married. And what with having to keep up the appearance of gentlepeople (at least to make a pretence at it) and to live in a decent-looking dwelling, and to buy clothes, and to pay doctors' bills and children's schooling, I'll leave you to guess how much he had left for luxuries out of his two hundred a year.

When expenses were coming upon him thick and fast, Marks sought out some night employment. A tradesman in the neighbourhood--Pimlico--a b.u.t.terman doing a flourishing business, advertised for a book-keeper to attend two or three hours in the evening. James Marks presented himself and was engaged. It had to be done in secrecy, lest offence should be taken at head-quarters. Had the little man in the chestnut wig heard of it, he might have objected to his clerk keeping any books but his own. Shut up in the b.u.t.terman's small back-closet that he called his counting-house, Mr. Marks could be as private as need be. So there he was! After coming home from his day's toil, instead of taking recreation, the home-sitting with his wife, or the stroll in the summer weather, in place of throwing work to the winds and giving his brain rest, James Marks, after s.n.a.t.c.hing a meal, tea and supper combined, went forth to work again, to weary his eyes with more figures and his head with casting them up. He generally managed to get home by eleven except on Sat.u.r.day; but the day's work was too much for any man. Better for him (could he have pocketed pride, and gained over Brown and Co.) that he had hired himself to stand behind the evening counter and serve out the b.u.t.ter and cheese to the customers. It would at least have been a relief from the accounts. And so the years had gone on.

A portion of the wife's letter to Mrs. Todhetley had run as follows: "Thank you very much for your kind inquiries after my husband, and for your hope that he is not overworking himself. _He is._ But I suppose I must have said something about it in my last letter (I am ashamed to remember that it was written two years ago!) that induced you to refer to it. That he is overworking himself I have known for a long time: and things that he has said lately have tended to alarm me. He speaks of sometimes getting confused in the head. In the midst of a close calculation he will suddenly seem to lose himself--lose memory and figures and all, and then he has to leave off for some minutes, close his eyes, and keep perfectly still, or else leave his stool and take a few turns up and down the room. Another thing he mentions--that the figures dance before his eyes in bed at night, and he is adding them up in his brain as if it were daytime and reality. It is very evident to me that he wants change and rest."

"And what a foolish fellow he must have been not to take it before this!" cried the Squire, commenting on parts of the letter, while Mrs.

Todhetley wrote.

"Perhaps that is what he has not been able to do, sir," I said.

"Not able! Why, what d'ye mean, Johnny?"

"It is difficult for a banker's clerk to get holiday. Their work has to go on all the same."

"Difficult! when a man's powers are breaking down! D'ye think bankers are made of flint and steel, not to give their clerks holiday when it is needed? Don't you talk nonsense, Johnny Ludlow."

But I was not so far wrong, after all. There came a letter of warm thanks from Mr. Marks himself in answer to Mrs. Todhetley's invitation.

He said how much he should have liked to accept it and what great good it would certainly have done him; but that upon applying for leave he found he could not be spared. So there seemed to be an end of it; and we hoped he would get better without the rest, and rub on as other clerks have to rub on. But in less than a month he wrote again, saying he would come if the Squire and Mrs. Todhetley were still pleased to have him.

He had been so much worse as to be obliged to tell Mr. Brown the truth--that he believed he _must_ have rest; and Mr. Brown had granted it to him.

It was the Wednesday in Pa.s.sion Week, and a fine spring day, when James Marks arrived at d.y.k.e Manor. Easter was late that year. He was rather a tall man, with dark eyes and very thin hair; he wore spectacles, and at first was rather shy in manner.

You should have seen his delight in the change. The walks he took, the enjoyment of what he called the sweet country. "Oh," he said one day to us, "yours must be the happiest lot on earth. No forced work; your living a.s.sured; nothing to do but to revel in this health-giving air!

Forgive my freedom, Mr. Todhetley," he added a moment after: "I was contrasting your lot with my own."

We were pa.s.sing through the fields towards the Court: the Squire was taking him to see the Sterlings, and he had said he would rather walk than drive. The hedges were breaking into green: the fields were yellow with b.u.t.tercups and cowslips. This was on the Monday. The sun shone and the breeze was soft. Mr. Marks sniffed the air as he went along.

"Six months of this would make a new man of me," we heard him say to himself in a low tone.

"Take it," cried the Squire.

Mr. Marks laughed, sadly enough. "You might as well tell me, sir, to--to take heaven," he said impulsively. "The one is no more in my power than the other.--Hark! I do believe that's the cuckoo!"

We stood to listen. It was the cuckoo, sure enough, for the first time that spring. It only gave out two or three notes, though, and then was silent.

"How many years it is since I heard the cuckoo!" he exclaimed, brushing his hand across his eyes. "More than twenty, I suppose. It seems to bring back my youth to me. What a thing it would be for us, sir, if we could only go to the mill that grinds people young again!"

The Squire laughed. "It is good of _you_ to talk of age, Marks; why, I must be nearly double yours," he added--which of course was random speaking.

"I feel old, Mr. Todhetley: perhaps older than you do. Think of the difference in our mode of life. I, tied to a desk for more hours of the twenty-four than I care to think of, my brain ever at work; you, revelling in this beautiful, healthy freedom!"

"Ay, well, it is a difference, when you come to think of it," said the Squire soberly.

"I must not repine," returned Marks. "There are more men in my case than in yours. No doubt it is well for me," he continued, dropping his voice, with a sigh. "Were your favoured lot mine, sir, I might find so much good in it as to forget that this world is not our home."

Perhaps it had never struck the Squire before how much he was to be envied; but Marks put it strongly. "You'd find crosses and cares enough in my place, I can tell you, Marks, of one sort or another. Johnny, here, knows how I am bothered sometimes."

"No doubt of it," replied Marks, with a smile. "No lot on earth can be free from its duties and responsibilities; and they must of necessity entail care. That is one thing, Mr. Todhetley; but to be working away your life at high pressure--and to know that you are working it away--is another."

"You acknowledge, then, that you are working too hard, Marks," said the Squire.