THE MOP.—THE SHOP.—WHAT THE CHEAP JACK’S WIFE HAD TO TELL.—WHAT GEORGE
WITHHELD.
A MOP is a local name for a hiring-fair, at which young men and women
present themselves to be hired as domestic servants or farm laborers for
a year. It was at a mop that the windmiller had hired George, and it was
at that annual festival that his long service came to an end. He betook
himself to the town, where the fair was going on, not with any definite
intention of seeking another master, but from a variety of reasons:
partly for a holiday, and to “see the fun;” partly to visit the Cheap
Jack, and hear what advice he had to give, and to learn what was in the
letter; partly with the idea that something might suggest itself in the
busy town as a suitable investment for his savings and his talents. At
the worst, he could but take another place.
The sun shone brightly on the market-place as George passed through it.
The scene was quaint and picturesque. Booths, travelling shows, penny
theatres, quack doctors, tumblers, profile cutters, exhibitors and
salesmen of all sorts, thronged the square, and overflowed into a space
behind, where some houses had been burnt down and never rebuilt; whilst
round the remains of the market cross in the centre were grouped the lads
and lasses “on hire.” The girls were smartly dressed, and the young men
in snowy smocks, above which peeped waistcoats of gay colors, looked in
the earlier part of the day so spruce, that it was as lamentable to see
them after the hours of beer-drinking and shag tobacco-smoking which
followed, as it was to see what might have been a neighborly and cheerful
festival finally swamped in drunkenness and debauchery.
George’s smock was white, and George’s waistcoat was red, and he had made
himself smart enough, but he did not linger amongst his fellow-servants
at the Cross. He hurried through the crowd, nodding sheepishly in answer
to a shower of chaff and greetings, and made his way to the by-street
where the Cheap Jack had a small dingy shop for the sale of coarse
pottery. Some people were spiteful enough to hint that the shop-trade
was of much less value to him than the store-room attached, where the
goods were believed to be not all of one kind.
The red bread-pans, pipkins, flower-pots, and so forth, were grouped
about the door with some attempt at effective display, and with cheap
prices marked in chalk upon their sides. The window was clean, and in it
many knick-knacks of other kinds were mixed with the smaller china ware.
And, when George entered the shop, the hunchback’s wife was behind the
counter. Like Mrs. Lake, he paused to think where he could have seen her
before; the not uncomely face marred by an ugly mouth, in which the upper
lip was long and cleft, and the lower lip large and heavy, seemed
familiar to him. He was still beating his brains when the Cheap Jack
came in.
George had been puzzled that the woman’s countenance did not seem new to
him, and he was puzzled and disturbed also that the expression on the
face of the Cheap Jack was quite new. Whatever the hunchback had in his
head, however, he was not unfriendly in his manner.
“Good morning, George, my dear!” he cried, cheerfully; “you’ve seen my
missus before, eh, George?” George was just about to say no, when he
remembered that he had seen the woman, and when and where.
“Dreadful night that was, Mr. Sannel!” said the Cheap Jack’s wife, with a
smile on her large mouth. George assented, and by the hospitable
invitation of the newly married couple he followed them into the dwelling
part of the house, trying as he did so to decide upon a plan for his
future conduct.
Here at last was a woman who could probably tell all that he wanted to
know about the mystery on which he had hoped to trade, and—the Cheap Jack
had married her. If any thing could be got out of the knowledge of Jan’s
history, the Cheap Jack, and not George, would get it now. The hasty
resolution to which George came was to try to share what he could not
keep entirely to himself. He flattered himself he could be very civil,
and—he had got the letter.
It proved useful. George was resolved not to show it until he had got at
something of what the large-mouthed woman had to tell; and, as she wanted
to see the letter, she made a virtue of necessity, and seemed anxious to
help the miller’s man to the utmost of her power.
The history of her connection with Jan’s babyhood was soon told, and she
told it truthfully.
Five years before her marriage to the Cheap Jack, she was a chambermaid
in a small hotel in London, and “under notice to leave.” Why—she did not
deem it necessary to tell George. In this hotel Jan was born, and Jan’s
mother died. She was a foreigner, it was supposed, and her husband also,
for they talked a foreign language to each other. He was not with her
when she first came, but he joined her afterwards, and was with her at
her death. So far the Cheap Jack’s wife spoke upon hearsay. Though
employed at the hotel, which was very full, she was not sleeping in the
house; she was not on good terms with the landlady, nor even with the
other servants, and her first real connection with the matter was when
the gentleman, overhearing some “words” between her and the landlady at
the bar, abruptly asked her if she were in want of employment. He
employed her,—to take the child to the very town where she was now living
as the Cheap Jack’s wife. He did not come with her, as he had to attend
his wife’s funeral. It was understood at the hotel that he was going to
take the body abroad for interment. So the porter had said. The person
to whom she was directed to bring the child was a respectable old woman,
living in the outskirts of the town, whose business was sick-nursing.
She seemed, however, to be comfortably off, and had not been out for some
time. She had been nurse to the gentleman in his childhood, so she once
told the Cheap Jack’s wife with tears. But she was always shedding
tears, either over the baby, or as she sat over her big Bible, “for ever
having to wipe her spectacles, and tears running over her nose ridic’lus
to behold.” She was pious, and read the Bible aloud in the evening.
Then she had fainting fits; she could not go uphill or upstairs without
great difficulty, and she had one of her fits when she first saw the
child. If with these infirmities of body and mind the ex-nurse had been
easily managed, the Cheap Jack’s wife professed that she could have borne
it with patience. But the old woman was painfully shrewd, and there was
no hoodwinking her. She never allowed the Cheap Jack’s wife to go out
without her, and contrived, in spite of a hundred plans and excuses, to
prevent her from speaking to any of the townspeople alone. Never, said
Sal, never could she have put up with it, even for the short time before
the gentleman came down to them, but for knowing it would be a paying
job. But his arrival was the signal for another catastrophe, which ended
in Jan’s becoming a child of the mill.
If the sight of the baby had nearly overpowered the old nurse, the sight
of the dark-eyed gentleman overwhelmed her yet more. Then they were
closeted together for a long time, and the old woman’s tongue hardly ever
stopped. Sal explained that she would not have been such a fool as to
let this conversation escape her, if she could have helped it. She took
her place at the keyhole, and had an excuse ready for the old woman, if
she should come out suddenly. The old woman came out suddenly; but she
did not wait for the excuse. She sent the Cheap Jack’s wife civilly on
an errand into the kitchen, and then followed her, and shut the door and
turned the key upon her without hesitation, leaving her unable to hear
any thing but the tones of the conversation through the parlor wall. She
never opened the door again. As far as the Cheap Jack’s wife could tell,
the old woman seemed to be remonstrating and pleading; the gentleman
spoke now and then. Then there was a lull, then a thud, then a short
pause, and then the parlor-door was burst open, and the gentleman came
flying towards the kitchen, and calling for the Cheap Jack’s wife. The
fact that the door was locked caused some delay, and delay was not
desirable. The old nurse had had “a fit.” When the doctor came, he gave
no hope of her life. She had had heart disease for many years, he said.
In the midst of this confusion, a letter came for the gentleman, which
seemed absolutely to distract him. He bade Sal get the little Jan ready,
and put his clothes together, and they started that evening for the mill.
Sal believed it was the doctor who recommended Mrs. Lake as a
foster-mother for the baby, having attended her child. The storm came on
after they started. The child had been very sickly ever since they left
London. The gentleman took the Cheap Jack’s wife straight back to the
station, paid her handsomely, and sent her up to town again. She had
never seen him since. As to his name, it so happened she had never heard
it at the hotel; but when he was setting her off to the country with the
child, she asked it, and he told her that it was Ford. The old nurse
also spoke of him as Mr. Ford, but—so Sal fancied—with a sort of effort,
which made her suspect that it was not his real name.
“Yes, it be!” said George, who had followed the narrative with
open-mouthed interest. “It be aal right. I knows. ’Twas a gentleman by
the name of Ford as cried his pocket-book, and the vive-pound bill in the
papers. ’Tis aal right. Ford—Jan Ford be the little varment’s name
then, and he be gentry-born, too! Missus Lake she allus said so, she
did, sartinly.”
George was so absorbed by the flood of information which had burst upon
him all at once, and by adjusting his clumsy thoughts to the new view of
Jan, that he did not stop to think whether the Cheap Jack and his wife
had known of the lost pocket-book and the reward. They had not. The
dark gentleman had no wish to reopen communication with the woman he had
employed. He thought (and rightly) that the book had fallen when he
stumbled over his cloak in getting into the carriage, and he had refused
to advertise it except in the local papers. And at that time the Cheap
Jack and Sal were both in London.
But George’s incautious speech recalled one or two facts to them, and
whilst George sat slowly endeavoring to realize that new idea, “Master
Jan Ford, full young gentleman, and at least half Frenchman” (for of any
other foreigners George knew nothing), the Cheap Jack was pondering the
words “five-pound bill,” and connecting them with George’s account of his
savings when they last met; and his quicker spouse was also putting two
and two together, but with a larger sum. At the same instant the Cheap
Jack inquired after George’s money, and his wife asked about the letter.
But George had hastily come to a decision. If the tale told by the woman
were true, he had got a great deal of information for nothing, and he saw
no reason for sharing whatever the letter might contain with those most
likely to profit by it. As to letting the Cheap Jack have any thing
whatever to do with the disposal of his savings, nothing could be further
from his intentions.
“Gearge bean’t such a vool as a looks,” thought that worthy, and aloud he
vowed, with unnecessary oaths, that the money was still in the bank, and
that he had forgotten to bring the letter, which was in a bundle that he
had left at the mill.
This disappointment did not, however, diminish the civility of the Cheap
Jack’s wife. She was very hospitable, and even pressed George to spend
the night at their house, which he declined. He had a dread of the Cheap
Jack, which was almost superstitious.
For her civility, indeed, the Cheap Jack’s wife was taken to task by her
husband in a few moments when they were alone together.
“I thought you was sharper than to be took in by him!” said the
hunchback, indignantly. “Do you believe all that gag about the bank and
the bundle? and you, as soft to him, telling him every blessed thing, and
he stowed the cash and the letter somewheres where we shall never catch a
sight of ’em, and got every thing out of you as easy as shelling a pod of
peas.” And in language as strong as that of the miller’s man the Cheap
Jack swore he could have done better himself a hundred times over.
“Could you?” said the large-mouthed woman, contemptuously. “I wouldn’t
live long in the country, I wouldn’t, if it was to make me such a owl as
you’ve turned into. It ain’t much farther than your nose _you_ sees!”
“Never mind me, Sal, my dear,” said the hunchback, anxiously. “I trusts
you, my dear. And it seems to me as if you thought he’d got ’em about
him. Do you, my dear, and why? And why did you tell him the truth,
straight on end, when a made-up tale would have done as well, and kept
him in the dark?”
“Why did I tell him the truth?” repeated the woman. “’Cos I ain’t such a
countrified fool as to think lies is allus the cleverest tip, ’cos the
truth went farthest this time. Why do I think he’s got ’em about him?
First, ’cos he swore so steady he hadn’t. For a ready lie, and for
acting a lie, and over-acting it at times, give me townspeople; but for a
thundering big un, against all reason, and for sticking to it stupid when
they’re downright convicted, and with a face as innercent as a baby’s,
give me a country lump. And next, because I can tell with folks a deal
sharper than him, even to which side of ’em the pocket is they’ve got
what they wants to hide in, by the way they moves their head and their
hands.”
“Which side is it of him, Sal?” said the hunchback, with ugly eagerness.
“The left,” said Sal; “but it won’t be there long.”