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.
"I know I am, sir. But there's no help for it."
"It is a pity."
"Why it should begin to tell upon me so early I don't know. There are
numbers of other men, who work as long and as hard as I do, and are
seemingly none the worse for it."
"The time will come though when they will be, I presume."
"As surely as that sun is shining in the sky."
"Possibly you have been more anxious than they, Marks."
"It may be so. My conscience has always been in my work, to do it
efficiently. I fear, too, I am rather sensitively organized as to nerves
and brain. Upon those who are so, I fancy work tells sooner than on
others."
The Squire put his arm within Marks's. "You must have a bit of a
struggle to get along, too, on your small salary."
"True: and it all helps. Work and struggle together are not the most
desirable combination. But for being obliged to increase my means by
some stratagem or other, I should not have taken on the additional
evening's work."
"How long are you at it, now, of an evening?"
"Usually about two hours. On Saturdays and at Christmas-time longer."
"And I suppose you must continue this night-work?"
"Yes. I get fifty pounds a year for it. And I assure you I should not
know how to spare one pound of the fifty. No one knows the expenses of
children, except those who have to look at every shilling before it can
be spent."
There was a pause. Mr. Marks stooped, plucked a cowslip and held it to
his lips.
"Don't you think, Marks," resumed the Squire, in a confidential,
friendly tone, "that you were just a little imprudent to marry?"
"No, I do not think I was," he replied slowly, as if considering the
question. "I did not marry very early: I was eight-and-twenty; and I
had got together the wherewithal to furnish a house, and something in
hand besides. The question was mooted among us at Brown's the other
day--whether it was wiser, or not, for young clerks to marry. There is a
great deal to be urged both ways--against marrying and against remaining
single."
"What can you urge against remaining single?"
"A very great deal, sir. I feel sure, Mr. Todhetley, that you can form
no idea of the miserable temptations that beset a young fellow in
London. Quite half the London clerks, perhaps more, have no home to go
to when their day is over; I mean no parent's home. A solitary room and
no one to bear them company in it; that's all they have; perhaps, in
addition, a crabbed landlady. Can you blame them very much if they go
out and escape this solitude?--they are at the age, you know, when
enjoyment is most keen; the thirst for it well-nigh irrepressible----"
"And then they go off to those disreputable singing places!" exploded
the Squire, not allowing him to finish.
"Singing places, yes; and other places. Theatres, concerts,
supper-rooms--oh, I cannot tell you a tithe of the temptation that
meets them at every turn and corner. Many and many a poor young fellow,
well-intentioned in the main, has been ruined both in pocket and in
health by these snares; led into them at first by dangerous companions."
"Surely all do not get led away."
"Not all. Some strive on manfully, remembering early precepts and taking
God for their guide, and so escape. But it is not the greater portion
who do this. Some marry early, and secure themselves a home. Which is
best?--I put the question only in a worldly point of view. To commit the
imprudence of marrying, and so bring on themselves and wives intolerable
perplexity and care: or to waste their substance in riotous living!"
"I'll be shot if I know!" cried the Squire, taking off his hat to
rub his puzzled head. "It's a sad thing for poor little children to
be pinched, and for men like you to be obliged to work yourselves to
shatters to keep them. But as to those others, I'd give 'em all a night
at the treadmill. Johnny! Johnny Ludlow!"
"Yes, sir."
"You may be thankful that _you_ don't live in London."
I had been thinking to myself that I was thankful not to be one of those
poor young clerks to have no home to go to when work was over. Some
fellows would rather tramp up and down the streets, than sit alone in
a solitary room; and the streets, according to Marks, teemed with
temptations. He resumed.
"In my case I judged it the reverse of imprudence to marry, for my wife
expected a fairly good fortune. She was an only child, and her father
had realized enough to live quietly; say three or four hundred a year.
Mr. Stockleigh had been a member of the Stock Exchange, but his health
failed and he retired. Neither I nor his daughter ever doubted--no, nor
did he himself--that this money must come to us in time."
"And won't it?" cried the Squire.
Marks shook his head. "I fear not. A designing servant, that they had,
got over him after his daughter left--he was weak in health and weak in
mind--and he married her. Caroline--my wife--resented it naturally;
there was some recrimination on either side, and since then they have
closed the door against her and me. So you see, with no prospect before
us, there's nothing for me but to work the harder," he concluded, with a
kind of plucked-up cheerfulness.
"But, to do that, you should get up your health and strength, Marks. You
must, you know. What would you do if you broke down?"
"Hush!" came the involuntary and almost affrighted answer. "Don't remind
me of it, sir. Sometimes I dream of it, and cannot bear to awaken."
We had got to like Marks very much only in those few days. He was a
gentleman in mind and manners and a pleasant one into the bargain,
though he did pass his days adding up figures and was kept down by
poverty. The Squire meant to keep him for a month: two months if he
would stay.
On the following morning, Tuesday, during breakfast-time, a letter came
for him by the post--the first he had had. He had told his wife she need
not write to him, wanting to have all the time for idle enjoyment: not
to spend it in answering letters.
"From home, James?" asked Mrs. Todhetley.
"No," said he, smiling. "It is only a reminder that I am due to-morrow
at the house."
"What house?" cried the Squire.
"Our house, sir. Brown and Co.'s."
The Squire put down his buttered roll--for Molly had graciously sent in
hot rolls that morning--and stared at the speaker.
"What on earth are you talking of?" he cried. "You don't mean to say you
are thinking of going back?"
"Indeed I am--unfortunately. I must get up to London to-night."
"Why, bless my heart," cried the Squire, getting up and standing a bit,
"you've not been here a week!"
"It is all the leave I could get, Mr. Todhetley: a week. I thought you
understood that."
"You can't go away till you are cured," roared the Squire. "Why didn't
you go back the day you came? Don't talk nonsense, Marks."
"Indeed I should like to stay longer," he earnestly said. "I wish I
could. Don't you see, Mr. Todhetley, that it does not lie with me?"
"Do you dare to look me in the face, Marks, and tell me this one week's
rest has cured you? What on earth!--are you turning silly?"
"It has done me a great, great deal of good----"
"It has not, Marks. It can't have done it; not real good," came the
Squire's interruption. "One would think you were a child."
"It was with difficulty I obtained this one week's leave," he explained.
"I am really required in the office; my absence I know causes trouble.
This holiday has done so much for me that I shall go back with a good
heart."
"Look here," said the Squire: "suppose you take French leave, and stay?"
"In that case my discharge would doubtless arrive by the first post."
"Look here again: suppose in a month or two you break down and have to
leave? What then?"
"Brown and Co. would appoint a fresh clerk in my place."
"Why don't Brown and Co. keep another clerk or two, so as to work you
all less?"
Marks smiled at the very idea. "That would increase their expenses, Mr.
Todhetley. They will never do that. It is a part of the business of
Brown's life to keep expenses down."
Well, Marks had to go. The Squire was very serious in thinking more rest
absolutely needful--of what service _could_ a week be, he reiterated.
Down he sat, wrote a letter to Brown and Co., telling them his opinion,
and requesting the favour of their despatching James Marks back for a
longer holiday. This he sent by post, and they would get it in the
morning.
"No, I'll not trust it to you, Marks," he said: "you might never deliver
it. Catch an old bird with chaff!"
To this letter there came no answer at all; and Mr. Marks did not come
back. The Squire relieved his mind by calling Brown and Co. thieves and
wretches--and so it passed. It must be remembered that I am writing of
past years, when holidays were not so universal for any class, clerk or
master, as they are at present. Not that I am aware whether financiers'
clerks get them now.
The next scene in the drama I can only tell by hearsay. It took place in
London, where I was not.
* * * * *
It was a dull, rainy day in February, and Mrs. Marks sat in her
parlour in Pimlico. The house was one of a long row, and the parlour
just about large enough to turn in. She sat by the fire, nursing a
little two-year-old girl, and thinking; and three other children, the
eldest a boy of nine, were playing at the table--building houses on
the red cloth with little wooden bricks. Mrs. Marks was a sensible
woman, understanding proper management, and had taken care to bring up
her children not to be troublesome. She looked about thirty, and must
have been pretty once, but her face was faded now, her grey eyes had
a sad look in them. The chatter at the table and the bricks fell
unheeded on her ear.
"Mamma, will it soon be tea-time?"
There was no answer.
"Didn't you hear, mamma? Carry asked if it would soon be tea-time. What
were you thinking about?"
She heard this time, and started out of her reverie. "Very soon now,
Willy dear. Thinking? Oh, I was thinking about your papa."
Her thoughts were by no means bright ones. That her husband's health and
powers were failing, she felt as sure of as though she could foresee the
ending that was soon to come. How he went on and did his work was a
marvel: but he could not give it up, or bread would fail.
The week's rest in the country had set Mr. Marks up for some months.
Until the next autumn he worked on better than he had been able to do
for some time past. And then he failed again. There was no particular
failing outwardly, but he felt all too conscious that his overtaxed
brain was getting worse than it had ever been. He struggled on;
making no sign. That he should have to resign part of his work was an
inevitable fact: he must give up the evening book-keeping to enable him
to keep his more important place. "Once let me get Christmas work over,"
thought he, "and as soon as possible in the New Year, I will resign."
He got the Christmas work over. Very heavy it was, at both places, and
nearly did for him. It is the last straw, you know, that breaks the
camel's back: and that work broke James Marks. Towards the end of
January he was laid up in bed with a violent cold that settled on his
chest. Brown and Co. had to do without him for eleven days: a calamity
that--so far as Marks was concerned--had never happened in Brown and
Co.'s experience. Then he went back to the city again, feeling shaken;
but the evening labour was perforce given up.
No one knew how ill he was: or, to speak more correctly, how unfit for
work, how more incapable of it he was growing day by day. His wife
suspected a little. She knew of his sleepless nights, the result of
overtaxed nerves and brain, when he would toss and turn and get up and
walk the room; and dress himself in the morning without having slept.
"There are times," he said to her in a sort of horror, "when I cannot
at all collect my thoughts. I am as long again at my work as I used to
be, and have to go over it again and again. There have been one or two
mistakes, and old Brown asks what is coming to me. I can't help it.
The figures whirl before me, and I lose my power of mind."
"If you could only sleep well!" said Mrs. Marks.
"Ay, if I could. The brain is as much at work by night as by day. There
are the figures mentally before me, and there am I, adding them up."
"You should see a clever physician, James. Spare the guinea, and go. It
may be more than the guinea saved."
Mr. Marks took the advice. He went to a clever doctor; explained his
position, the kind of work he had to do, and described his symptoms.
"Can I be cured?" he asked.
"Oh yes, I think so," said the doctor, cheerfully, without telling him
that he had gone on so far as to make it rather doubtful. "The necessary
treatment is very simple. Take change of scene and perfect rest."
"For how long?"
"Twelve months, at least."
"Twelve months!" repeated Marks, in a queer tone.
"At least. It is a case of absolute necessity. I will write you a
prescription for a tonic. You must live _well_. You have not lived well
enough for the work you have to do."
As James Marks went out into the street he could have laughed a laugh
of bitter mockery. Twelve months' rest for _him_? The doctor had told
him one thing--that had he taken rest in time, a very, very much
shorter period would have sufficed. "I wonder how many poor men there
are like myself in London at this moment," he thought, "who want this
rest and cannot take it, and who ought to live better and cannot
afford to do it!"
It was altogether so very hopeless that he did nothing, except take the
tonic, and he continued to go to the City as usual. Some two or three
weeks had elapsed since then: he of course growing worse, though there
was nothing to show it outwardly: and this was the end of February, and
Mrs. Marks sat thinking of it all over the fire; thinking of what she
knew, and guessing at what she did not know, and her children were
building houses at the table.
The servant came in with the tea-things, and took the little girl. Only
one servant could be kept--and hardly that. Mrs. Marks had made her own
tea and was pouring out the children's milk-and-water, when they heard a
cab drive up and stop at the door. A minute after Mr. Marks entered,
leaning on the arm of one of his fellow-clerks.
"Here, Mrs. Marks, I have brought you an invalid," said the latter
gaily, making light of it for her sake. "He seems better now. I don't
think there's much the matter with him."
Had it come? Had what she had been dreading come--that he was going to
have an illness, she wondered. But she was a trump of a wife, and showed
herself calm and comforting.
"You shall both of you have some tea at once," she said, cheerfully.
"Willy, run and get more tea-cups."
It appeared that Mr. Marks had been, as the clerk expressed it, very
queer that day; more so than usual. He could not do his work at all;
had to get assistance continually from one or the other, and ended by
falling off his stool to the floor, in what he called, afterwards, a
"sensation of giddiness." He seemed fit for nothing, and Mr. Brown said
he had better be taken home.
That day ended James Marks's work. He had broken down. At night he told
his wife what the physician had said; which he had not done before. She
could scarcely conceal her dismay.
A twelvemonth's rest for him! What would become of them? Failing his
salary, they would have no means whatever of living.
"Oh, if my father had only acted by us as he ought!" she mentally cried.
"James could have taken rest in time then, and all would have been well.
Will he help us now it has come to this? Will _she_ let him?--for it is
she who holds him in subjection and steels his heart against us."
Mr. Stockleigh, the father, lived at Sydenham. She, the new wife, had
taken him off there from his residence in Pimlico as soon as might be
after the marriage; and the daughter had never been invited inside the
house. But she resolved to go there now. Saying nothing to her husband,
Mrs. Marks started for Sydenham the day after he was brought home ill,
and found the place without trouble.
The wife, formerly the cook, was a big brawny woman with a cheek and a
tongue of her own. When Mrs. Marks was shown in, she forgot herself in
the surprise; old habits prevailed, and she half dropped a curtsey.
"I wish to see papa, Mrs. Stockleigh."
"Mr. Stockleigh's out, ma'am."
"Then I must wait until he returns."
Mrs. Stockleigh did not see her way clear to turn this lady from
the house, though she would have liked to do it. She made a show of
hospitality, and ordered wine and cake to be put on the table. Of which
wine, Mrs. Marks noticed with surprise, she drank _four_ glasses. "Now
and then we used to suspect her of drinking in the kitchen!" ran through
Mrs. Marks's thoughts. "Has it grown upon her?"
The garden gate opened, and Mr. Stockleigh came through it. He was so
bowed and broken that his daughter scarcely knew him. She hastened out
and met him in the path.
"Caroline!" he exclaimed in amazement. "Is it really you? How much you
have changed?"
"I came down to speak to you, papa. May we stay and talk here in the
garden?"
He seemed glad to see her, rather than not, and sat down with her on the
garden bench in the sun. In a quiet voice she told him all: and asked
him to help her. Mrs. Stockleigh had come out and stood listening to the
treason, somewhat unsteady in her walk.
"I--I would help you if I could, Caroline," he said, in hesitation,
glancing at his wife.
"Yes, but you can't, Stockleigh," she put in. "Our own expenses is as
much as iver we can manage, Mrs. Marks. It's a orful cost, living out
here, and our two servants is the very deuce for extravigance. I've
changed 'em both ten times for others, and the last lot is always worse
than the first."
"Papa, do you see our position?" resumed Mrs. Marks, after hearing the
lady patiently. "It will be a long time before James is able to do
anything again--if he ever is--and we have not been able to save money.
What are we to do? Go to the workhouse? I have four little children."
"You know that you can't help, Stockleigh," insisted Mr. Stockleigh's
lady, taking up the answer, her face growing more inflamed. "You've not
got the means to do anything: and there's an end on't."
"It is true, Caroline; I'm afraid I have not," he said--and his daughter
saw with pain how tremblingly subject he was to his wife. "I seem short
of money always. How did you come down, my dear?"
"By the train, papa. Third class."
"Oh dear!" cried Mr. Stockleigh. "My health's broken, Caroline. It is,
indeed, and my spirit too. I am sure I am very sorry for you. Will you
come in and take some dinner?"
"We've got nothing but a bit of 'ashed beef," cried Mrs. Stockleigh,
as if to put a damper upon the invitation. "Him and me fails in our
appetites dreadful: I can't think what's come to 'em."
Mrs. Marks declined dinner: she had to get back to the children. That
any sort of pleading would be useless while that woman held sway, she
saw well. "Good-bye, papa," she said. "I suppose we must do the best we
can alone. Good morning, Mrs. Stockleigh."
To her surprise her father kissed her; kissed her with quivering lips.
"I will open the gate for you, my dear," he said, hastening on to it.
As she was going through, he slipped a sovereign into her hand.
"It will pay for your journey, at least, my dear. I am sorry to hear of
your travelling third class. Ah, times have changed. It is not that I
won't help you, child, but that I can't. She goes up to receive the
dividends, and keeps me short. I should not have had that sovereign now,
but it is the change out of the spirit bill that she sent me to pay.
Hush! the money goes in drink. She drinks like a fish. Ah, Caroline, I
was a fool--a fool! Fare you well, my dear."
"Fare _you_ well, dear papa, and thank you," she answered, turning away
with brimming eyes and an aching heart.
After resting for some days and getting no better, James Marks had to
give it up as a bad job. He went to the City house, saw Mr. Brown, and
told him.
"Broken down!" cried old Brown, hitching back his wig, as he always did
when put out. "I never heard such nonsense. At your age! The thing's
incomprehensible."
"The work has been very wearing to the brain, sir; and my application to
it was close. During the three-and-twenty years I have been with you I
have never had but one week's holiday: the one last spring."
"You told me then you felt like a man breaking down, as if you were good
for nothing," resentfully spoke old Brown.
"Yes, sir. I told you that I believed I was breaking down for want of a
rest," replied Marks. "It has proved so."
"Why, you had your rest."
"One week, sir. I said I feared it would not be of much use. But--it was
not convenient for you to allow me more."
"Of course it was not convenient; you know it could not be convenient,"
retorted old Brown. "D'you think I keep my clerks for play, Marks? D'you
suppose my business will get done of itself?"
"I was aware myself, sir, how inconvenient my absence would be, and
therefore I did not press the matter. That one week's rest did me a
wonderful amount of service: it enabled me to go on until now."
Old Brown looked at him. "See here, Marks--we are sorry to lose you:
suppose you take another week's change now, and try what it will do. A
fortnight, say. Go to the sea-side, or somewhere."
Marks shook his head. "Too late, sir. The doctors tell me it will be
twelve months before I am able to work again at calculations."
"Oh, my service to you," cried Mr. Brown. "Why, what are you going to do
if you cannot work?"
"That is a great deal more than I can say, sir. The thought of it is
troubling my brain quite as much as work ever did. It is never out of
it, night or day."
For once in his screwy life, old Brown was generous. He told Mr. Marks
to draw his salary up to the day he had left, and he added ten pounds to
it over and above.
* * * * *
During that visit I paid to Miss Deveen's in London, when Tod was with
the Whitneys, and Helen made her first curtsey to the Queen, and we
discovered the ill-doings of that syren, Mademoiselle Sophie Chalk, I
saw Marks. Mrs. Todhetley had given me two or three commissions, as may
be remembered: one amongst them was to call in Pimlico, and see how
Marks was getting on.
Accordingly I went. We had heard nothing, you must understand, of what
I have told above, and did not know but he was still in his situation.
It was a showery day in April: just a twelvemonth, by the way, since
his visit to us at Dyke Manor. I found the house out readily; it was
near Ebury Street; and I knocked. A young lad opened the door, and
asked me to walk into the parlour.
"You are Mr. Marks's son," I said, rubbing my feet on the mat: "I can
tell by the likeness. What's your name?"
"William. Papa's is James."
"Yes, I know."
"He is ill," whispered the lad, with his hand on the door handle.
"Mamma's downstairs, making him some arrowroot."
Well, I think you might have knocked me down with a feather when I knew
him--for at first I did not. He was sitting in an easy-chair by the
fire, dressed, but wrapped round with blankets: and instead of being
the James Marks we had known, he was like a living skeleton, with
cheek-bones and hollow eyes. But he was glad to see me, smiled, and
held out his hand from the blanket.
It is uncommonly awkward for a young fellow to be taken unawares like
this. You don't know what to say. I'm sure I as much thought he was
dying as I ever thought anything in this world. At last I managed to
stammer a word or two about being sorry to see him so ill.
"Ay," said he, in a weak, panting voice, "I am different from what I
was when with your kind people, Johnny. The trouble I foresaw then has
come."
"You used sometimes to feel then as though you would not long keep up,"
was my answer, for really I could find nothing else to say.