Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles Part 34

"I'll stand outside the door a bit, I think," he answered. "I am in your way everywhere."

"Sit where you are, and lift up your legs," was the reiterated command.

And Timothy obeyed.

Cold and dreary, on he sat, watching the cleaning of the kitchen. The fire gave out no heat, and the squares of bricks did not dry. He took some silver from his pocket, and laid it in a stack on the table beside him, for his wife to take up at her leisure. She allowed him no chance of squandering _his_ wages.

A few minutes, and Mrs. Carter rose from her knees and went into the yard for a fresh supply of water. Timothy did not wait for a second ducking. He slipped off the table, took a shilling from the heap, and stole from the house.

Back came Mrs. Carter, her pail br.i.m.m.i.n.g. "You go over to Dame Buffle's, Tim, and----Why, where's he gone?"

He was not in the kitchen, that was certain; and she opened the staircase door, and elevated her voice shrilly. "Are you gone tramping up my stairs, with your dirty boots? Tim Carter, I say, are you upstairs?"

Of course Tim Carter was not upstairs: or he had never dared to leave that voice unanswered.

"Now, if he has gone off to any of them sotting publics, he shan't hear the last of it," she exclaimed, opening the door and gazing as far as the nearest gas-light would permit. But Timothy was beyond her eye and reach, and she caught up the money and counted it. Fourteen shillings.

One shilling of it gone.

She knew what it meant, and dashed the silver into a wide-necked canister on the high mantelshelf, which contained also her own earnings for the week. It would have been as much as meek Tim Carter's life was worth to touch that canister, and she kept it openly on the mantel-piece. Many unfortunate wives in Honey Fair could not keep their money from their husbands even under lock and key. As she was putting the canister in its place again, Betsy came in. Mrs. Carter turned sharply upon her.

"Now, miss! where have you been?"

"Law, mother, how you fly out! I have only been to Cross's."

"You ungrateful piece of bra.s.s, when you know there's so much to be done on a Satur-night that I can't turn myself round! You shan't go gadding about half your time. I'll put you from home entire, to a good tight service."

Betsy had heard the same threat so often that its effect was gone. Had her mother only kept her in one-tenth of the subjection that she did her husband, it might have been better for the young lady. "I was only in at Cross's," she repeated.

"What's the good of telling me that falsehood? I went to Cross's after you, but you wasn't there, and hadn't been there. You want a good sound shaking, miss."

"If I wasn't at Cross's, I was at Mason's," was the imperturbable reply of Miss Betsy. "I was at Mason's first. Mark Mason came home and turned as sour as a wasp, because the place was in a mess. She was washing her children, and she's got the kitchen to do, and he began blowing up. I left 'em then, and went in to Cross's. Mason went back down the hill; so he'll come home tipsy."

"Why can't she get her children washed afore he comes home?" retorted Mrs. Carter, who could see plenty of motes in her neighbours' eyes, though utterly blind to the beam in her own. "Such wretched management!

Children ought to be packed out of the way by seven o'clock."

"You don't get your cleaning over, any more than she does," remarked Miss Betsy boldly.

Mrs. Carter turned an angry gaze upon her; a torrent of words breaking from her lips. "I get my cleaning over! I, who am at work every moment of my day, from early morning till late at night! You'd liken me to that good-for-nothing Het Mason, who hardly makes a dozen o' gloves in a week, and keeps her house like a pigsty! Where would you and your father be, if I didn't work to keep you, and slave to make the place sweet and comfortable? Be off to Dame Buffle's and buy me a besom, you ungrateful monkey: and then you turn to and dust these chairs."

Betsy did not wait for a second bidding. She preferred going for besoms, or for anything else, to her mother's kitchen and her mother's scolding.

Her coming back was another affair; she would be just as likely to propel the besom into the kitchen and make off herself, as to enter.

She suddenly stopped now, door in hand, to relate some news.

"I say, mother, there's going to be a party at the Alhambra tea-gardens."

"A party at the Alhambra tea-gardens, with frost and snow on the ground!" ironically repeated Mrs. Carter. "Be off, and don't be an oaf."

"It's true," said Betsy. "All Honey Fair's going to it. I shall go too.

'Melia and Mary Ann Cross is going to have new things for it, and----"

"Will you go along and get that besom?" cried angry Mrs. Carter. "No child of mine shall go off to their Alhambras, catching their death on the wet gra.s.s."

"Wet gra.s.s!" echoed Betsy. "Why, you're never such a gaby as to think they'd have a party on the gra.s.s! It is to be in the big room, and there's to be a fiddle and a tam----"

"----bourine" never came. Mrs. Carter sent the wet mop flying after Miss Betsy, and the young lady, dexterously evading it, flung-to the door and departed.

A couple of hours later, Timothy Carter was escorted home, his own walking none of the steadiest. The men with him had taken more than Timothy; but it was that weak man's misfortune to be overcome by a little. You will allow, however, that he had taken enough, having spent his shilling and gone into debt besides. Mrs. Carter received him----Well, I am rather at a loss to describe it. She did not actually beat him, but her shrill voice might be heard all over Honey Fair, lavishing hard names upon helpless Tim. First of all, she turned out his pockets. The shilling was all gone. "And how much more tacked on to it?" asked she, wise by experience. And Timothy was just able to understand and answer. He felt himself as a lamb in the fangs of a wolf.

"Eightpence halfpenny."

"A shilling and eightpence halfpenny chucked away in drink in one night!" repeated Mrs. Carter. She gave him a short, emphatic shake, and propelled him up the stairs; leaving him without a light, to get to bed as he could. She had still some hours' work downstairs, in the shape of mending clothes.

But it never once occurred to Mrs. Carter that she had herself to thank for his misdoings. With a tidy room and a cheerful fire to receive him, on returning from his day's work, Timothy Carter would no more have thought of the public-houses than you or I should. And if, as did Charlotte East, she had welcomed him with a good supper and a pleasant tongue, poor Tim in his grat.i.tude had forsworn public-houses for ever.

Neither, when Mark Mason staggered home, and _his_ wife raved at and quarrelled with him, to the further edification of Honey Fair, did it strike that lady that she could be in fault. As Mrs. Carter had said, Henrietta Mason did not overburden herself with work of any sort; but she did make a pretence of washing her four children in a bucket on a Sat.u.r.day night, and her kitchen afterwards. The ceremony was delayed through idleness and bad management to the least propitious part of the evening. So sure as she had the bucket before the fire, and the children collected round it; one in, one just out roaring to be dried, and the two others waiting their turn for the water, all of them stark naked--for Mrs. Mason made a point of undressing them at once to save trouble--so sure, I say, as these ablutions were in progress, the children frantically crying, Mrs. Mason boxing, storming, and rubbing, and the kitchen swimming, in would walk the father. Words invariably ensued: a short, sharp quarrel; and he would turn out again for the nearest public-house, where he was welcomed by a sociable room and a glowing fire. Can any one be surprised that it should be so?

You must not think these cases overdrawn; you must not think them exceptional cases. They are neither the one nor the other. They are truthful pictures, taken from what Honey Fair was then. I very much fear the same pictures might be taken from some places still.

CHAPTER XXII.

MR. BRUMM'S SUNDAY SHIRT.

But there's something to say yet of Mrs. Brumm. You saw her turning away from Robert East's door, saying that her husband, Andrew, had promised to come home that night and to bring his wages. Mrs. Brumm, a bad manager, as were many of the rest, would probably have received him with a sloppy kitchen, buckets, and besoms. Andrew had had experience of this, and, disloyal knight that he was, allowed himself to be seduced into the Horned Ram. He'd just take one pint and a pipe, he said to his conscience, and be home in time for his wife to get what she wanted. A little private matter of his own would call him away early. Pressed for a sum of money in the week which was owing to his club, and not possessing it, he had put his Sunday coat in pledge: and this he wanted to get out. However, a comrade sitting in the next chair to him at the Horned Ram had to get _his_ coat out of the same accommodating receptacle. Nothing more easy than for him to bring out Andrew's at the same time; which was done. The coat on the back of his chair, his pipe in his mouth, and a pint of good ale before him, the outer world was as nothing to Andrew Brumm.

At ten o'clock, the landlord came in. "Andrew Brumm, here's your wife wanting to see you."

Now Andrew was not a bad sort of man by any means, but he had a great antipathy to being looked after. A joke went round at Andrew's expense; for if there was one thing the men in general hated more than another, it was that their wives should come in quest of them to the public-houses. Mrs. Brumm received a sharp reprimand; but she saw that he was, as she expressed it, "getting on," so she got some money from him and kept her scolding for another opportunity.

She did not go near the p.a.w.nbroker's to get her irons out. She bought a bit of meat and what else she wanted, and returned to Honey Fair. Robert East was closing his door for the night as she pa.s.sed it. "Has Brumm come home?" he asked.

"Not he, the toper! He is stuck fast at the Horned Ram, getting in for it nicely. I have been after him for some money."

"Have you got your irons out?" inquired Charlotte, coming to the door.

"No, nor nothing else; and there's pretty near half the kitchen in. It's him that'll suffer. He has been getting out his own coat, but he can't put it on. Leastways, he won't without a clean collar and shirt; and let him fish for _them_. Wait till to-morrow comes, Mr. 'Drew Brumm!"

"Was _his_ coat in?" returned Charlotte, surprised.

"That it was. Him as goes on so when I puts a thing or two in! He owed some money at his club, and he went and put his coat in for four shillings, and Adam Thorneycroft has been and fetched it out for him."

"Adam Thorneycroft!" involuntarily returned Charlotte.

"Thorneycroft's coat was in too, and he went for it just now, and Brumm gave him the ticket to get out his. Smith's daughter told me that. She was serving with her mother in the bar."

"Is Adam Thorneycroft at the Horned Ram still?"