The Girls of St. Olave's Part 10

"Not me!" answered Jim emphatically.

CHAPTER X.

A MEAN THING.

There was no need to remind Jane of the offending Pattie in words.

Tom's face had done that already, and she was meditating vengeance.

She and Jim and the baby reached their own home at midnight on Easter Monday, and by nine o'clock on the Tuesday morning she was at the weekly washtub which she superintended in Old Keston, her arms immersed in soap suds, her eyes on the garden fence which cut her off from Pattie's premises.

If she could only catch sight of Pattie hanging out washing, and have a few words with her!

Pattie, however, was not at the wash-tub this week. In Denys's and Gertrude's absence all the washing had been sent out, to leave Pattie more time to help Mrs. Brougham, and at that minute Pattie was busily running round the house tidying up after the holiday, and looking forward to taking little Maud out in the afternoon, a treat which she was beginning to appreciate very highly.

As Tom had said, she looked tired, even though it was so early in the day; but she would not have allowed for an instant that she had anything to trouble her. Why should she have, when she had only to let Sam Willard, the butcher's a.s.sistant, know when she would be out for an hour in the evening, and there he would be at the corner waiting for her, with his fine air and his curled moustache and his hair in a curl on his forehead. And he had no end of money, he was always c.h.i.n.king a pocketful, and talking of what he should buy. Only on Sat.u.r.day he had taken her round to look at the shops, and they had lingered a long time outside a jeweller's, and Sam had pointed out the ring he meant to give his sweetheart some day. Pattie had quite held her breath as she imagined her hand with that ring on it!

Now as she swept up the bedrooms she glanced at her hands and frowned.

She was not very clever at keeping her hands nice, but she always excused herself with the plea that grates and wash-tubs and saucepans were to blame.

The hands that wore that ring would not be used for brooms and black-lead brushes! She wondered what furniture would be bought to match that ring!

And then, involuntarily, she thought of another Sat.u.r.day evening when Tom had taken her to look at the shops, and they had lingered outside, not a jeweller's, but a furniture shop, and Tom had pointed out a tall Windsor arm-chair and said they would have two of those in their home, and she had pictured herself in one of those chairs by a bright fireside in a cosy kitchen with Tom opposite to her, reading his paper, while she had a bit of dainty white needlework in her lap, such as she had seen her last mistress, who was newly married, busy with.

She remembered how, as she pictured that happy little fireside, she had made up her mind to keep her hands better, not for the wearing of jewelled rings, but for the accomplishment of that same dainty needlework.

As she thought of all this, Tom's face came back to her memory. She wished, oh, how she wished that she had looked round at him when her friend had whispered that he was on the other side of the road!

What had he looked like? Why should her friend look upon his face and she not see it?

"Oh, Tom! Tom!" she whispered to herself and a sudden hate towards that jewelled ring sprang up in her.

When the afternoon came and she wheeled little Maud out in her mail cart, she turned towards the shops. She felt as if to see that Windsor arm-chair again would be next best to seeing Tom.

But the Windsor arm-chair was gone. Gone, like the dream of the happy little home; gone, as Tom had gone, out of her life.

Its place was filled by an inexpensive plush-covered parlour suite, suitable to the little villa where the wearer of that jewelled ring should take up her abode, but Pattie turned from it petulantly.

"Cheap and nasty!" she said.

Now it so happened that on this afternoon, when Jane Adams came to hang out the last of her washing, she found herself short of pegs. At another time she would have managed with pins or hung the clothes in bunches, but all day the craving for beer had been growing upon her, and she determined to go out and buy pegs and have a drink.

Through force of circ.u.mstances she had not tasted a drop since Sat.u.r.day at dinner-time. Three whole days without a gla.s.s of beer!

There had been none at her father's home, of course. The old people had been abstainers since she and Tom were babies, and she had not cared to acknowledge to them that she "took a drop now and again." It had been too late when she and Jim reached home last night to fetch any, and she had hurried to her work this morning, and, indeed, had not thought of getting a gla.s.s on her way, so full was her mind of Pattie.

But now she meant to have a gla.s.s, and pegs she _must_ have!

So having told her lady--about the pegs--she put on her bonnet and hurried out.

She soon found a grocer's and bought her pegs, and then she turned in to the nearest public-house.

Not one gla.s.s, nor two, nor three, were sufficient to allay her longing, and the housekeeping money went without a thought; it was only the remembrance of the fleeting time which stayed her. She did not wish her lady to wonder where she was.

When she pushed open the public-house door and emerged into the street again, she was not completely mistress of herself, but just in the state when she would be very affable or very quarrelsome, as circ.u.mstances should seem to point.

And as she put her foot upon the threshold, Pattie, wheeling little Maud, and with her heart full of Tom, came along the pavement.

Now Pattie was a staunch little abstainer; all the more staunch because of her childhood's memories. Memories of nights when, piteous and shivering, she had waited outside a public-house door, to lead home her poor sorrowful mother, bound indeed by Satan these many years, by the chain of strong drink. Memories of days when on bended knee she had pleaded with that mother to give up the drink, and had been answered by a shake of the head, and a murmured, "I can't, child, I can't! I would if I could."

And Pattie had known of no remedy, no saving power, till she knew Tom, and Tom had said, "Pray for her, my girl. Christ can save her!"

So Pattie had prayed, not understanding how help could come, but because Tom believed in it, and, strange answer as it seemed, an illness had fallen upon her mother and she had been taken away to the Workhouse Infirmary.

Pattie remembered to this day the very saucepan she was washing when she realized that _this_ was the answer to her prayer, that her poor mother had been saved from herself, and taken to a place where she would be cared for, and kept from the terrible snare of drink.

"And now," Tom had said when she told him, "we must teach her about the love of Jesus."

So month after month since then, Tom had gone regularly to the Infirmary and read the gospel's message to Pattie's mother, for she was still there and never likely to come out, and the poor woman had come to look for him and to love him as her own son. Pattie wondered sometimes whether he still went, but on the one occasion that she had seen her mother since she gave Tom up, she had been too proud to ask.

Pattie never saw a woman come out of a public-house without an involuntary shiver at her heart, and now here, before her very eyes, came Tom's own sister, Jim Adams's wife!

Pattie recognised her in an instant, and she recognised Pattie, and though Pattie would only too willingly have pa.s.sed on, Jane stood in her path and barred the way.

"Well! Pattie Paul," said she insolently. "I want to know what you mean by it."

"I don't know what _you_ mean," said Pattie, trying to pa.s.s her, but Jane dodged her.

"Oh don't you?" she cried. "What do you mean by using my brother like you have, letting him dangle after you, and pretending you was going to marry him, and getting presents out of him?"

Pattie's face flamed.

"It's not true!" she said hotly. "I never got presents out of him, and I always meant to marry him----"

Jane sneered.

"Very likely!" she said, "he did well enough to play with, till a richer chap came along, and then you remembered Tom was poor! You're a mean thing, Pattie Paul!"

"Let me pa.s.s!" cried Pattie vehemently, "you've no right to say such things!"

"No right!" flared Jane, "and me seeing my own brother going thin and a-fretting for a worthless girl like you! No right!"

But Pattie stayed to hear no more. With a sudden turn of the mail-cart, she was past her enemy, and running swiftly down the pavement towards St. Olave's, while little Maud laughed and clapped her hands with delight; she thought the run was all to amuse her.

And Tom was going thin and fretting!

In the midst of her pride, anger and humiliation, that thought came back to Pattie over and over again.