Cathy from him--to avoid suffocation perhaps. She burst out laughing in
her old light manner, and took something out of the body of her gown,
under the shawl.
"No need, father: I am as honest as anybody," said she. "Look at this."
Reed's hand shook so that he could not open the paper, or understand it
at first when he had opened it. Cathy flung off her bonnet and caught
the children to her. They began to know her then and ceased their cries.
Presently Reed held the paper across to me, his hand trembling more than
before, and his face, that illness had left white enough, yet more
ghastly with emotion.
"Please read it, sir."
I did not understand it at first either, but the sense came to me soon.
It was a certificate of the marriage of Spencer Gervoise Daubeney
Parrifer and Catherine Reed. They had been married at Liverpool the very
day after Cathy disappeared from home; now just a year ago.
A sound of sobbing broke the stillness. Reed had fallen back in his
chair in a sort of hysterical fit. Defiant, hard, strong-minded Reed!
But the man was three parts dead from weakness. It lasted only a minute
or two; he roused himself as if ashamed, and swallowed down his sobs.
"How came he to marry you, Cathy?"
"Because I would not go away with him without it father. We have been
staying in Ireland."
"And be you repenting of it yet?" asked Mrs. Reed, in ungracious tones.
"Pretty near," answered Cathy, with candour.
It appeared that Cathy had made her way direct to Liverpool when she
left home the previous January, travelling all night. There she met
young Parrifer, who had preceded her and made arrangements for the
marriage. They were married that day, and afterwards went on to Ireland,
where he had to join his regiment.
To hear all this, sounding like a page out of a romance, would be
something wonderful for our quiet place when it came to be told. You
meet with marvellous stories in towns now and then, but with us they are
almost unknown.
"Where's your husband?" asked Reed.
Cathy tossed her head. "Ah! Where! That's what I've come home about,"
she answered: and it struck me at once that something was wrong.
What occurred next we only learnt from hearsay. I said good day to them,
and came away, thinking it might have been better if Cathy had not
married and left home. It was a fancy of mine, and I don't know why it
should have come to me, but it proved to be a right one. Cathy put on
her bonnet again to go to Parrifer Hall: and the particulars of her
visit were known abroad later.
It was growing rather dark when she approached it; the sun had set, the
grey of evening was drawing on. Two of the Misses Parrifer were at the
window and saw her coming, but Cathy had her veil down and they did not
recognize her. The actions and manners and air of a lady do not come
suddenly to one who has been differently bred; and the Misses Parrifer
supposed the visitor to be for the servants.
"Like her impudence!" said Miss Jemima. "Coming to the front entrance!"
For Cathy, whose year's experience in Ireland had widely changed her,
had no notion of taking up her old position. She meant to hold her own;
and was capable of doing it, not being deficient in the quality just
ascribed to her by Miss Jemima Parrifer.
"What next!" cried Miss Jemima, as a ring and a knock resounded through
the house, waking up the Major: who had been dozing over the fire
amongst his daughters.
The next was, that a servant came to the room and told the Major a lady
wanted him. She had been shown into the library.
"What name?" asked the Major.
"She didn't give none, sir. I asked, but she said never mind the name."
"Go and ask it again."
The man went and came back. "It is Mrs. Parrifer, sir."
"Mrs. who?"
"Mrs. Parrifer, sir."
The Major turned and stared at his servant. They had no relatives
whatever. Consequently the only Mrs. Parrifer within knowledge was his
wife.
Staring at the man would not bring him any elucidation. Major Parrifer
went to the library, and there saw the lady standing on one side of the
fender, holding her foot to the fire. She had her back to him, did not
turn, and so the Major went round to the other side of the hearth-rug
where he could see her.
"My servant told me a Mrs. Parrifer wanted me. Did he make a mistake in
the name?"
"No mistake at all, sir," said Cathy, throwing up her thick veil, and
drawing a step or two back. "I am Mrs. Parrifer."
The Major recognized her then. Cathy Reed! He was a man whose bluster
rarely failed him, but he had none ready at that moment. Three-parts
astounded, various perplexities held him tongue-tied.
"That is to say, Mrs. Spencer Parrifer," continued Cathy. "And I have
come over from Ireland on a mission to you, sir, from your son."
The Major thought that of all the audacious women it had ever been his
lot to meet, this one was the worst: at least as much as he could think
anything, for his wits were a little confused just then. A moment's
pause, and then the storm burst forth.
Cathy was called various agreeable names, and ordered out of the room
and the house. The Major put up his hands to "hurrish" her out--as we
say in Worcestershire by the cows, though I don't think you would find
the word in the dictionary. But Cathy stood her ground. He then went
ranting towards the door, calling for the servants to come and put her
forth. Cathy, quicker than he, gained it first and turned to face him,
her back against it.
"You needn't call me those names, Major Parrifer. Not that I care--as I
might if I deserved them. I am your son's wife, and have been such ever
since I left father's cottage last year; and my baby, your grandson,
sir, which it's seven weeks old he is, is now at the Red Lion, a mile
off. I've left it there with the landlady."
He could not put her out of the room unless by force; he looked ready to
kick and strike her; but in the midst of it a horrible dread rose up in
his heart that the calmly spoken words were true. Perhaps from the hour
when Reed had presented himself at the house to ask for his daughter,
the evening of the day he was discharged from prison, up to this time,
Major Parrifer had never thought of the girl. It had been said in his
ears now and again that Reed was grieving for his daughter; but the
matter was altogether too contemptible for Major Parrifer to take note
of. And now to hear that the girl had been with his son all the time,
his wife! But that utter disbelief came to his aid, the Major might have
fallen into a fit on the spot. For young Mr. Parrifer had cleverly
contrived that neither his father away at home nor his friends on the
spot should know anything about Cathy. He had been with his regiment in
quarters; she had lived privately in another part of the town. Mrs. Reed
had once called Lieutenant Parrifer as soft as a tomtit. He was a great
deal softer.
"Woman! if you do not quit my house, with your shameless lies, you shall
be flung out of it."
"I'll quit it as soon as I have told you what I came over the sea to
tell. Please to look at this first, sir?"
Major Parrifer snatched the paper that she held out, carried it to
the window, and put his glasses across his nose. It was a copy of the
certificate of marriage. His hands shook as he read it, just as Reed's
had shaken a short time before; and he tore it passionately in two.
"It is only the copy," said Cathy calmly, as she picked up the pieces.
"Your son--if he lives--is about to be tried for his life, sir. He is in
custody for wilful murder!"
"How dare you!" shrieked Major Parrifer.
"It is what they have charged him with. I have come all the way to tell
it you, sir."
Major Parrifer, brought to his senses by fright, could only listen.
Cathy, her back against the door still, gave him the heads of the story.
Young Parrifer was so soft that he had been made a butt of by sundry of
his brother-officers. They might not have tolerated him at all, but for
winning his money. He drank, and played cards, and bet upon horses; they
encouraged him to drink, and then made him play and bet, and altogether
cleared him out: not of brains, he had none to be cleared of: but of
money. Ruin stared him in the face: his available cash had been parted
with long ago; his commission (it was said) was mortgaged: how many
promissory notes, bills, I O U's he had signed could not even be guessed
at. In a quarrel a few nights before, after a public-house supper, when
some of them were the worse for drink, young Parrifer, who could on rare
occasions go into frightful passions, flung a carving-knife at one of
the others, a lieutenant named Cook; it struck a vital part and killed
him. Mr. Parrifer was arrested by the police at once; he was in plain
clothes and there was nothing to show that he was an officer. They had
to strap him down to carry him to prison: between drink, rage, and
fever, he was as a maniac. The next morning he was lying in brain fever,
and when Cathy left he had been put into a strait-waistcoat.
She gave the heads of this account in as few words as it is written.
Major Parrifer stood like a helpless man. Taking one thing with another,
the blow was horrible. Parents don't often see the defects in their own
children, especially if they are only sons. Far from having thought his
son soft, unfit (as he nearly was) to be trusted about, the Major had
been proud of him as his heir, and told the world he was perfection.
Soft as young Parrifer was, he had contrived to keep his ill-doings from
his father.
Of course it was only natural that the Major's first relief should be
abuse of Cathy. He told her all that had happened to his son _she_ was
the cause of, and called her a few more genteel names in doing it.
"Not at all," said Cathy; "you are wrong there, sir. His marriage with
me was a little bit of a stop-gap and served to keep him straight for a
month or two; but for that, he would have done for himself before now.
Do you think I've had a bargain in him, sir? No. Marriage is a thing
that can't be undone, Major Parrifer: but I wish to my heart that I was
at home again in father's cottage, light-hearted Cathy Reed."
The Major made no answer. Cathy went on.
"When the news was brought to me by his servant, that he had killed a
man and was lying raving, I thought it time to go and see about him.
They would not let me into the lock-up where he was lying--and you might
have heard his ravings outside. _I_ did. I said I was his wife; and then
they told me I had better see Captain Williams. I went to head-quarters
and saw Captain Williams. He seemed to doubt me; so I showed him the
certificate, and told him my baby was at home, turned six weeks old. He
was very kind then, sir; took me to see my husband; and advised me to
come over here at once and give you the particulars. I told him what was
the truth--that I had no money, and the lodgings were owing for. He
said the lodgings must wait: and he would lend me enough money for the
journey."
"Did you see him?" growled Major Parrifer.
Cathy knew that he alluded to his son, though he would not speak the
name.
"I saw him, sir; I told you so. He did not know me or anybody else; he
was raving mad, and shaking so that the bed shook under him."
"How is it that they have not written to me?" demanded Major Parrifer.
"I don't think anybody liked to do it. Captain Williams said the best
plan would be for me to come over. He asked me if I'd like to hear the
truth of the past as regarded my husband; or if I would just come here
and tell you the bare facts that were known about his illness and the
charge against him. I said I'd prefer to hear the truth--it couldn't be
worse than I suspected. Then he went on to the drinking and the gambling
and the debts, just as I have repeated it to you, sir. He was very
gentle; but he said he thought it would be mistaken kindness not to let
me fully understand the state of things. He said Mr. Parrifer's father,
or some other friend, had better go over to Ireland."
In spite of himself, a groan escaped Major Parrifer. The blow was the
worst that could have fallen upon him. He had not cared much for his
daughters; his ambition was centred in his son. Visions of a sojourn at
Dublin, and of figuring off at the Vice-Regal Court, himself, his wife,
and his son, had floated occasionally in rose-coloured clouds before his
eyes, poor pompous old simpleton. And now--to picture the visit he must
set out upon ere the night was over, nearly drove him wild with pain.
Cathy unlatched the door, but waited to speak again before she opened
it.
"I'll rid the house of me now that I have broke it to you, sir. If you
want me I shall be found at father's cottage; I suppose they'll let
me stay there: if not, you can hear of me at the place where I've left
my baby. And if your son should ever wake out of his delirium, Major
Parrifer, he will be able to tell you that if he had listened to me and
heeded me, or even only come to spend his evenings with me--which it's
months since he did--he would not have been in this plight now. Should
they try him for murder; and nothing can save him from it if he gets
well; I----"
A succession of screams cut short what Cathy was about to add. In her
surprise she drew wide the door, and was confronted by Miss Jemima
Parrifer. That young lady, curious upon the subject of the visit and
visitor, had thought it well to put her ear to the library door. With no
effect, however, until Cathy unlatched it. And then she heard more than
she had thought for.
"Is it _you_!" roughly cried Miss Jemima, recognizing her for the
ill-talked-of Cathy Reed, the daughter of the Major's enemy. "What do
you want here?"
Cathy did not answer. She walked to the hall-door and let herself out.
Miss Jemima went on into the library.
"Papa, what was it she was saying about Spencer, that vile girl? What
did she do here? Why did she send in her name as Mrs. Parrifer?"
The Major might have heard the questions, or he might not; he didn't
respond to them. Miss Jemima, looking closely at him in the darkness of
the room, saw a grey, worn, terror-stricken face, that looked as her
father's had never looked yet.
"Oh, papa! what is the matter? Are you ill?"
He walked towards her in the quietest manner possible, took her arm and
pushed her out at the door. Not rudely; softly, as one might do who is
in a dream.
"Presently, presently," he muttered in quite an altered voice, low and
timid. And Miss Jemima found the door bolted against her.
It must have been an awful moment with him. Look on what side he would,
there was no comfort. Spencer Parrifer was ruined past redemption. He
might die in this illness, and then, what of his soul? Not that the
Major was given to that kind of reflection. Escaping the illness, he
must be tried--for his life, as Cathy had phrased it. And escaping that,
if the miracle were possible, there remained the miserable debts and the
miserable wife he had clogged himself with.
Curiously enough, as the miserable Major, most miserable in that moment,
pictured these things, there suddenly rose up before his mind's eye
another picture. A remembrance of Reed, who had stood in that very room
less than twelve months ago, in the dim light of late night, with his
hair cut close, and his warning: "_It will come home to you, Major
Parrifer._" _Had_ it come home to him? Home to him already? The drops of
agony broke out on his face as he asked the question. It seemed to him,
in that moment of excitement, so very like some of Heaven's own
lightning.
One grievous portion of the many ills had perhaps not fallen, but for
putting Reed in prison--the marriage; and that one was more humiliating
to Major Parrifer's spirit than all the rest. Had Reed been at liberty,
Cathy might not have made her escape untracked, and the bitter marriage
might, in that case, have been avoided.
A groan, and now another, broke from the Major. How it had come home
to him! not his selfishness and his barbarity and his pride, but this
sorrowful blow. Reed's month in prison, compared with this, was as a
drop of water to the ocean. As to the girl--when Reed had come asking
for tidings of her, it had seemed to the Major not of the least moment
whither she had gone or what ill she had entered on: was she not a
common labourer's daughter, and that labourer George Reed? Even then, at
that very time, she was his daughter-in-law, and his son the one to be
humiliated. Major Parrifer ground his teeth, and only stopped when he
remembered that something must be done about that disgraceful son.
He started that night for Ireland. Cathy, affronted at some remark made
by Mrs. Reed, took herself off from her father's cottage. She had a
little money still left from her journey, and could spend it.
Spencer Gervoise Daubeney Parrifer (the Major and his wife had bestowed
the fine names upon him in pride at his baptism) died in prison. He
lived only a day after Major Parrifer's arrival, and never recognized
him. Of course it saved the trial, when he would probably have been
convicted of manslaughter. It saved the payment of his hundreds of debts
too; post-obits and all; he died before his father. But it could not
save exposure; it could not keep the facts from the world. Major and
Mrs. Parrifer, so to say, would never lift up their heads again; the sun
of their life had set.
Neither would Cathy lift hers yet awhile. She contrived to quarrel with
her father; the Parrifers never took the remotest notice of her; she
was nearly starved and her baby too. What little she earned was by hard
work: but it would not keep her, and she applied to the parish. The
parish in turn applied to Major Parrifer, and forced from him as much as
the law allowed, a few shillings a week. Having to apply to the parish
was, for Cathy, a humiliation never to be forgotten. The neighbours made
their comments.
"Cathy Reed had brought her pigs to a fine market!"
So she had; and she felt it more than the loss of her baby, who died
soon after. Better that she had married an honest day-labourer: and
Cathy knew it now.
VI.
LEASE, THE POINTSMAN.
It happened when we were staying at our other house, Crabb Cot. In
saying "we" were staying at it, I mean the family, for Tod and I were at
school.
Crabb Cot lay beyond the village of Crabb. Just across the road, a few
yards higher up, was the large farm of Mr. Coney; and his house and ours
were the only two that stood there. Crabb Cot was a smaller and more
cosy house than Dyke Manor; and, when there, we were not so very far
from Worcester: less than half-way, comparing it with the Manor.
Crabb was a large and straggling parish. North Crabb, which was nearest
to us, had the church and schools in it, but very few houses. South
Crabb, further off, was more populous. Nearly a mile beyond South Crabb,
there was a regular junction of rails. Lines, crossing each other in a
most bewildering manner, led off in all directions: and it required no
little manoeuvring to send the trains away right at busy times. Which
of course was the pointsman's affair.
The busiest days had place in summer, when excursion trains were in full
swing: but they would come occasionally at other times, driving the
South Crabb station people off their heads with bother before night.
The pointsman was Harry Lease. I dare say you have noticed how certain
names seem to belong to certain places. At North Crabb and South Crabb,
and in the district round about, the name of Lease was as common as
blackberries in a hedge; and if the different Leases had been cousins
in the days gone by, the relationship was lost now. There might be
seven-and-twenty Leases, in and out, but Harry Lease was not, so far as
he knew, akin to any of them.
South Crabb was not much of a place at best. A part of it, Crabb Lane,
branching off towards Massock's brickfields, was crowded as a London
street. Poor dwellings were huddled together, and children jostled each
other on the door-steps. Squire Todhetley said he remembered it when it
really was a lane, hedges on either side and a pond that was never dry.
Harry Lease lived in the last house, a thatched hut with three rooms in
it. He was a steady, civil, hard-working man, superior to some of his
neighbours, who were given to reeling home at night and beating their
wives on arrival. His wife, a nice sort of woman to talk to, was a bad
manager; but the five children were better behaved and better kept than
the other grubbers in the gutter.
Lease was the pointsman at South Crabb Junction, and helped also in the
general business there. He walked to his work at six in the morning,
carrying his breakfast with him; went home to dinner at twelve, the
leisure part of the day at the station, and had his tea taken to him at
four; leaving in general at nine. Sometimes his wife arrived with the
tea; sometimes the eldest child, Polly, an intelligent girl of six.
But, one afternoon in September, a crew of mischievous boys from the
brickfields espied what Polly was carrying. They set upon her, turned
over the can of tea in fighting for it, ate the bread-and-butter, tore
her pinafore in the skirmish, and frightened her nearly to death. After
that, Lease said that the child should not be sent with the tea: so,
when his wife could not take it, he went without tea. Polly and her
father were uncommonly alike, too quiet to battle much with the world:
sensitive, in fact: though it sounds odd to say that.
During the month of November one of the busy days occurred at South
Crabb Junction. There was a winter meeting on Worcester race-course, a
cattle and pig show in a town larger than Worcester, and two or three
markets and other causes of increased traffic, all falling on the
same day. What with cattle-trains, ordinary and special trains, and
goods-trains, and the grunting of obstinate pigs, Lease had plenty to
do to keep his points in order.
How it fell out he never knew. Between eight and nine o'clock, when a
train was expected in on its way to Worcester, Lease forgot to shift the
points. A goods-train had come in ten minutes before, for which he had
had to turn the points, and he never turned them back again. On came the
train, almost as quickly as though it had not to pull up at South Crabb
Junction. Watson, the station-master, came out to be in readiness.
"The engine has her steam on to-night," he remarked to Lease as he
watched the red lights, like two great eyes, come tearing on. "She'll
have to back."
She did something worse than back. Instead of slackening on the near
lines, she went flying off at a tangent to some outer ones on which the
goods-train stood, waiting until the passenger train should pass. There
was a short, sharp sound from the whistle, a great collision, a noise of
steam hissing, a sense of dire confusion: and for one minute afterwards
a dead lull, as if every one and everything were paralyzed.
"You never turned the points!" shouted the station-master to Lease.
Lease made no rejoinder. He backed against the wall like a man helpless,
his arms stretched out, his face and eyes wild with horror. Watson
thought he was going to have a fit, and shook him roughly.
"_You've_ done it nicely, you have!" he added, as he flew off to the
scene of disaster, from which the steam was beginning to clear away. But
Lease reached it before him.
"God forgive me! God have mercy upon me!"
A porter, running side by side with Lease, heard him say it. In telling
it afterwards the man described the tone as one of intense, piteous
agony.
The Squire and Mrs. Todhetley, who had been a few miles off to spend the
day, were in the train with Lena. The child did nothing but cry and sob;
not with damage, but fright. Mr. Coney also happened to be in it; and
Massock, who owned the brickfields. They were not hurt at all, only a
little shaken, and (as the Squire put it afterwards,) mortally scared.
Massock, an under-bred man, who had grown rich by his brickfields, was
more pompous than a lord. The three seized upon the station-master.
"Now then, Watson," cried Mr. Coney, "what was the cause of all this?"
"If there have been any negligence here--and I know there have--you
shall be transported for it, Watson, as sure as I'm a living man,"
roared Massock.
"I'm afraid, gentlemen, that something was wrong with the points,"
acknowledged Watson, willing to shift the blame from himself, and too
confused to consider policy. "At least that's all I can think."
"With the points!" cried Massock. "Them's Harry Lease's work. Was he on
to-night?"