"Let's have breakfast first," said Winslow, "and do things at their
proper time."
He was preoccupied at breakfast, and Minnie watched him anxiously.
His only remark was to declare his egg a bad one. It wasn't; it was a
little flavoury,--being one of those at fifteen a shilling,--but quite
nice. He pushed it away from him, and then, having eaten a slice of
bread and butter, admitted himself in the wrong by resuming the egg.
"Sid," said Minnie, as he stood up to go into the shop again, "you're
not well."
"I'm _well_ enough." He looked at her as though he hated her.
"Then there's something else the matter. You aren't angry with me, Sid,
are you, about that braid? _Do_ tell me what's the matter. You were
just like this at tea yesterday, and at supper-time. It wasn't the
braid then."
"And I'm likely to be."
She looked interrogation. "Oh, what _is_ the matter?" she said.
It was too good a chance to miss, and he brought the evil news out with
dramatic force. "Matter?" he said. "I done my best, and here we are.
That's the matter! If I can't pay Helter, Skelter & Grab eighty pounds,
this day three week"--Pause. "We shall be sold up! Sold up! That's the
matter, Min! SOLD UP!"
"Oh, Sid!" began Minnie.
He slammed the door. For the moment he felt relieved of at least half
his misery. He began dusting boxes that did not require dusting,
and then reblocked a cretonne already faultlessly blocked. He was
in a state of grim wretchedness; a martyr under the harrow of fate.
At anyrate, it should not be said he failed for want of industry.
And how he had planned and contrived and worked! All to this end!
He felt horrible doubts. Providence and Bandersnatch--surely they
were incompatible! Perhaps he was being "tried"? That sent him
off upon a new tack, a very comforting one. That martyr pose, the
gold-in-the-furnace attitude, lasted all the morning.
At dinner--"potato pie"--he looked up suddenly, and saw Minnie's face
regarding him. Pale she looked, and a little red about the eyes.
Something caught him suddenly with a queer effect upon his throat. All
his thoughts seemed to wheel round into quite a new direction.
He pushed back his plate and stared at her blankly. Then he got up,
went round the table to her--she staring at him. He dropped on his
knees beside her without a word. "Oh, Minnie!" he said, and suddenly
she knew it was peace, and put her arms about him, as he began to sob
and weep.
He cried like a little boy, slobbering on her shoulder that he was a
knave to have married her and brought her to this, that he hadn't the
wits to be trusted with a penny, that it was all his fault, that he
"_had_ hoped _so_"--ending in a howl. And she, crying gently herself,
patting his shoulders, said "_Ssh!_" softly to his noisy weeping, and
so soothed the outbreak. Then suddenly the crazy little bell upon the
shop door began, and Winslow had to jump to his feet, and be a man
again.
After that scene they "talked it over" at tea, at supper, in
bed, at every possible interval in between, solemnly--quite
inconclusively--with set faces and eyes for the most part staring in
front of them--and yet with a certain mutual comfort. "What to do I
don't know," was Winslow's main proposition. Minnie tried to take a
cheerful view of service--with a probable baby. But she found she
needed all her courage. And her uncle would help her again, perhaps,
just at the critical time. It didn't do for folks to be too proud.
Besides, "something might happen," a favourite formula with her.
One hopeful line was to anticipate a sudden afflux of customers.
"Perhaps," said Minnie, "you might get together fifty. They know you
well enough to trust you a bit." They debated that point. Once the
possibility of Helter, Skelter and Grab giving credit was admitted,
it was pleasant to begin sweating the acceptable minimum. For some
half-hour over tea the second day after Winslow's discoveries they
were quite cheerful again, laughing even at their terrific fears. Even
twenty pounds to go on with might be considered enough. Then in some
mysterious way the pleasant prospect of Messrs. Helter, Skelter, & Grab
tempering the wind to the shorn retailer vanished--vanished absolutely,
and Winslow found himself again in the pit of despair.
He began looking about at the furniture, and wondering idly what
it would fetch. The chiffonier was good, anyhow, and there were
Minnie's old plates that her mother used to have. Then he began to
think of desperate expedients for putting off the evil day. He had
heard somewhere of Bills of Sale--there was to his ears something
comfortingly substantial in the phrase. Then, why not "Go to the
Money-Lenders"?
One cheering thing happened on Thursday afternoon; a little girl came
in with a pattern of "print," and he was able to match it. He had not
been able to match anything out of his meagre stock before. He went
in and told Minnie. The incident is mentioned lest the reader should
imagine it was uniform despair with him.
The next morning, and the next, after the discovery, Winslow opened
shop late. When one has been awake most of the night, and has no hope,
what _is_ the good of getting up punctually? But as he went into the
dark shop on Friday he saw something lying on the floor, something
lit by the bright light that came under the ill-fitting door--a black
oblong. He stooped and picked up an envelope with a deep mourning edge.
It was addressed to his wife. Clearly a death in her family--perhaps
her uncle. He knew the man too well to have expectations. And they
would have to get mourning and go to the funeral. The brutal cruelty
of people dying! He saw it all in a flash--he always visualised his
thoughts. Black trousers to get, black crape, black gloves--none in
stock--the railway fares, the shop closed for the day.
"I'm afraid there's bad news, Minnie," he said.
She was kneeling before the fireplace, blowing the fire. She had her
housemaid's gloves on and the old country sun-bonnet she wore of
a morning, to keep the dust out of her hair. She turned, saw the
envelope, gave a gasp, and pressed two bloodless lips together.
"I'm afraid it's uncle," she said, holding the letter and staring with
eyes wide open into Winslow's face. "_It's a strange hand!_"
"The postmark's Hull," said Winslow.
"The postmark's Hull."
Minnie opened the letter slowly, drew it out, hesitated, turned it
over, saw the signature. "It's Mr. Speight!"
"What does he say?" said Winslow.
Minnie began to read. "_Oh!_" she screamed. She dropped the letter,
collapsed into a crouching heap, her hands covering her eyes. Winslow
snatched at it. "A most terrible accident has occurred," he read;
"Melchior's chimney fell down yesterday evening right on the top of
your uncle's house, and every living soul was killed--your uncle,
your cousin Mary, Will and Ned, and the girl--every one of them, and
smashed--you would hardly know them. I'm writing to you to break the
news before you see it in the papers"--The letter fluttered from
Winslow's fingers. He put out his hand against the mantel to steady
himself.
All of them dead! Then he saw, as in a vision, a row of seven cottages,
each let at seven shillings a week, a timber yard, two villas, and the
ruins--still marketable--of the avuncular residence. He tried to feel
a sense of loss and could not. They were sure to have been left to
Minnie's aunt. All dead! 7×7×52÷20 began insensibly to work itself out
in his mind, but discipline was ever weak in his mental arithmetic;
figures kept moving from one line to another, like children playing
at Widdy, Widdy Way. Was it two hundred pounds about--or one hundred
pounds? Presently he picked up the letter again, and finishing reading
it. "You being the next of kin," said Mr. Speight.
"How _awful_!" said Minnie in a horror-struck whisper, and looking up
at last. Winslow stared back at her, shaking his head solemnly. There
were a thousand things running through his mind, but none that, even
to his dull sense, seemed appropriate as a remark. "It was the Lord's
will," he said at last.
"It seems so very, very terrible," said Minnie; "auntie, dear
auntie--Ted--poor, dear uncle"--
"It was the Lord's will, Minnie," said Winslow, with infinite feeling.
A long silence.
"Yes," said Minnie, very slowly, staring thoughtfully at the crackling
black paper in the grate. The fire had gone out. "Yes, perhaps it was
the Lord's will."
They looked gravely at one another. Each would have been terribly
shocked at any mention of the property by the other. She turned to the
dark fireplace and began tearing up an old newspaper slowly. Whatever
our losses may be, the world's work still waits for us. Winslow gave a
deep sigh and walked in a hushed manner towards the front door. As he
opened it, a flood of sunlight came streaming into the dark shadows of
the closed shop. Bandersnatch, Helter, Skelter, & Grab, had vanished
out of his mind like the mists before the rising sun.
Presently he was carrying in the shutters, and in the briskest way,
the fire in the kitchen was crackling exhilaratingly, with a little
saucepan walloping above it, for Minnie was boiling two eggs,--one for
herself this morning, as well as one for him,--and Minnie herself was
audible, laying breakfast with the greatest _éclat_. The blow was a
sudden and terrible one--but it behoves us to face such things bravely
in this sad, unaccountable world. It was quite midday before either of
them mentioned the cottages.