GEORGE AS A MONEYED MAN.—SAL.—THE “WHITE HORSE.”—THE WEDDING.—THE
WINDMILLER’S WIFE FORGETS, AND REMEMBERS TOO LATE.
EXCITEMENT, the stifling atmosphere of the public-house, and the spirits
he had drunk at his friend’s expense, had somewhat confused the brains of
the miller’s man by the time that the Cheap Jack rose to go. George was,
as a rule, sober beyond the wont of the rustics of the district, chiefly
from parsimony. When he could drink at another man’s expense, he was not
always prudent.
“So you’ve settled to go, my dear?” said the dwarf, as they stood
together by the cart. “Business being slack, and parties unpleasantly
suspicious, eh?”
“Never you mind,” said George, who felt very foolish, and hoped himself
successful in looking very wise; “I be going to set up for myself; I’m
tired of slaving for another man.”
“Quite right, too,” said the dwarf; “but all businesses takes money, of
which, my dear, I doesn’t doubt you’ve plenty. You always took care of
Number One, when you did business with Cheap John.”
At that moment, George felt himself a sort of embodiment of shrewd
wisdom; he had taken another sip from the glass, which was still in his
hand, and the only drawback to the sense of magnified cunning by which
his ideas seemed to be illumined was a less pleasant feeling that they
were perpetually slipping from his grasp. To the familiar idea of
outwitting the Cheap Jack he held fast, however.
“It be nothin’ to thee what a have,” he said slowly; “but a don’t mind
’ee knowin’ so much, Jack, because ’ee can’t get at un; haw, haw! Not
unless ’ee robs the savings-bank.”
The dwarf’s eyes twinkled, and he affected to secure some pictures that
hung low, as he said carelessly,—
“Savings-banks be good places for a poor man to lay by in. They takes
small sums, and a few shillings comes in useful to a honest man, George,
my dear, if they doesn’t go far in business.”
“Shillings!” cried George, indignantly; “pounds!” And then, doubtful if
he had not said too much, he added, “A don’t so much mind ’ee knowing,
Jack, because ’ee can’t get at ’em!”
“It’s a pity you’re such a poor scholar, George,” said the Cheap Jack,
turning round, and looking full at his friend; “you’re so sharp, but for
that, my dear. You don’t think you counts the money over in your head
till you makes it out more than it is, now, eh?”
“A can keep things in my yead,” said George, “better than most folks can
keep a book; I knows what I has, and what other folks can’t get at. I
knows how I put un in. First, the five-pound bill”—
“They must have stared to see you bring five pound in a lump, George, my
dear!” said the hunchback. “Was it wise, do you think?”
“Gearge bean’t such a vool as a looks,” replied the miller’s man. “A
took good care to change it first, Cheap John, and a put it in by bits.”
“You’re a clever customer, George,” said his friend. “Well, my dear?
First, the five-pound bill, and then?”
George looked puzzled, and then, suddenly, angry. “What be that to you?”
he asked, and forthwith relapsed into a sulky fit, from which the Cheap
Jack found it impossible to rouse him. All attempts to renew the
subject, or to induce the miller’s man to talk at all, proved fruitless.
The Cheap Jack insisted, however, on taking a friendly leave.
“Good-by, my dear,” said he, “till the mop. You knows my place in the
town, and I shall expect you.”
The miller’s man only replied by a defiant nod, which possibly meant that
he would come, but had some appearance of expressing only a sarcastic
wish that the Cheap Jack might see him on the occasion alluded to.
In obedience to a yell from its master, the white horse now started
forward, and it is not too much to say that the journey to town was not
made more pleasant for the poor beast by the fact that the Cheap Jack had
a good deal of long-suppressed fury to vent upon somebody.
It was perhaps well for the bones of the white horse that, just as they
entered the town, the Cheap Jack brushed against a woman on the narrow
foot-path, who having turned to remonstrate in no very civil terms,
suddenly checked herself, and said in a low voice, “Juggling Jack!”
The dwarf started, and looked at the woman with a puzzled air.
She was a middle-aged woman, in the earlier half of middle age; she was
shabbily dressed, and had a face that would not have been ill-looking,
but that the upper lip was long and cleft, and the lower one unusually
large. As the Cheap Jack still stared in silence, she burst into a noisy
laugh, saying, “More know Jack the Fool than Jack the Fool knows.” But,
even as she spoke, a gleam of recognition suddenly spread over the
hunchback’s face, and, putting out his hand, he said, “Sal! _you here_,
my dear?”
“The air of London don’t agree with me just now,” was the reply; “and how
are you, Jack?”
“The country air’s just beginning to disagree with me, my dear,” said the
hunchback; “but I’m glad to see you, Sal. Come in here, my dear, and
let’s have a talk, and a little refreshment.”
The place of refreshment to which the dwarf alluded was another
public-house, the White Horse by name. There was no need to bid the
Cheap Jack’s white horse to pause here; he stopped of himself at every
public-house; nineteen times out of twenty to the great convenience of
his master, for which he got no thanks; the twentieth time the hunchback
did not want to stop, and he was lavish of abuse of the beast’s stupidity
in coming to a standstill.
The white horse drooped his soft white nose and weary neck for a long,
long time under the effigy of his namesake swinging overhead, and when
the Cheap Jack did come out, he seemed so preoccupied that the tired
beast got home with fewer blows than usual.
He unloaded his cart mechanically, as if in a dream; but when he touched
the pictures, they seemed to awaken a fresh train of thought. He stamped
one of his little feet spitefully on the ground, and, with a pretty close
imitation of George’s dialect, said bitterly, “Gearge bean’t such a vool
as a looks!” adding, after a pause, “I’d do a deal to pay _him_ off!”
As he turned into the house, he said thoughtfully, “Sal’s precious sharp;
she allus was. And a fine woman, too, is Sal!”
* * * * *
Not long after the incidents just related, it happened that business
called Mrs. Lake to the neighboring town. She seldom went out, but a
well-to-do aunt was sick, and wished to see her; and the miller gave his
consent to her going.
She met the milk-cart at the corner of the road, and so was driven to the
town, and she took Jan with her.
He had begged hard to go, and was intensely amused by all he saw. The
young Lakes were so thoroughly in the habit of taking every thing,
whether commonplace or curious, in the same phlegmatic fashion, that
Jan’s pleasure was a new pleasure to his foster-mother, and they enjoyed
themselves greatly.
As they were making their way towards the inn where they were to pick up
a neighbor, in whose cart they were to be driven home, their progress was
hindered by a crowd, which had collected near one of the churches.
Mrs. Lake was one of those people who lead colorless lives, and are
without mental resources, to whom a calamity is almost delightful, from
the stimulus it gives to the imagination, and the relief it affords to
the monotony of existence.
“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” she cried, peering through the crowd: “I wonder
what it is. ’Tis likely ’tis a man in a fit now, I shouldn’t wonder, or
a cart upset, and every soul killed, as it might be ourselves going home
this very evening. Dear, dear! ’tis a venturesome thing to leave home,
too!”
“’Ere they be! ’ere they be!” roared a wave of the crowd, composed of
boys, breaking on Mrs. Lake and Jan at this point.
“’Tis the body, sure as death!” murmured the windmiller’s wife; but, as
she spoke, the street boys set up a lusty cheer, and Jan, who had escaped
to explore on his own account, came running back, crying,—
“’Tis the Cheap Jack, mammy! and he’s been getting married.”
If any thing could have rivalled the interest of a sudden death for Mrs.
Lake, it must have been such a wedding as this. She hurried to the
front, and was just in time to catch sight of the happy couple as they
passed down the street, escorted by a crowd of congratulating boys.
[Picture: If any thing could have rivalled the interest of a sudden death
for Mrs. Lake, it must have been such a wedding as this]
“Well done, Cheap John!” roared one. “You’ve chose a beauty, you have,”
cried another. “She’s ’arf a ’ead taller, anyway,” added a third. “Many
happy returns of the day, Jack!” yelled a fourth.
Jan was charmed, and again and again he drew Mrs. Lake’s attention to the
fact that it really _was_ the Cheap Jack.
But the windmiller’s wife was staring at the bride. Not merely because
the bride is commonly considered the central figure of a wedding-party,
but because her face seemed familiar to Mrs. Lake, and she could not
remember where she had seen her. Though she could remember nothing, the
association seemed to be one of pain. In vain she beat her brains.
Memory was an almost uncultivated quality with her, and, like the rest of
her intellectual powers, had a nervous, skittish way of deserting her in
need, as if from timidity.
Mrs. Lake could sometimes remember things when she got into bed, but on
this occasion her pillow did not assist her; and the windmiller snubbed
her for making “such a caddle” about a woman’s face she might have seen
anywhere or nowhere, for that matter; so she got no help from him.
And it was not till after the Cheap Jack and his wife had left the
neighborhood, that one night (she was in bed) it suddenly “came to her,”
as she said, that the dwarf’s bride was the woman who had brought Jan to
the mill, on the night of the great storm.