IN THE HOUSEKEEPER'S ROOM.
George Dallas had eaten but sparingly of the food which Mrs. Brookes
had placed before him. He was weary and excited, and he bore the delay
and the solitude of the housekeeper's room with feverish impatience.
He strode up and down the room, stooping occasionally before the fire
to kick at the crumbling logs, and glance at the clock, which marked
how rapidly the night was waning. Half an hour, which seemed three
times as much to him, had elapsed since Mis Brookes had left him.
Faintly and indistinctly the sounds of the music reached him, adding
to his irritation and weariness. A savage frown darkened his face, and
he muttered to himself in the same tone as that of his spasmodic
soliloquy in the avenue:
"I wonder if she's thinking that I ought to be there too; or if I
ought not, neither ought she. After all, I'm her son, and she might
make a stand-up fight for me, if she would. He's fond of her, the old
woman says, and proud of her, and well he may be. What's the use of it
all, if she can't manage him? What fools women are! If they only could
calculate at first, and take their own line from the beginning, they
could manage any men. But she's afraid of him, and she lets him find
it out. Well, well, it must be wretched enough for her, too. But why
does she not come?"
He had to wait a little longer yet, for another quarter of an hour had
elapsed before Mrs. Brookes returned.
"Is she coming?" he asked eagerly, when at length the pale-faced
little woman gently entered the room.
"Yes, she is coming. She has to wait until the first lot are gone in
to supper. Then master will not miss her."
The old woman came up to him, and took his right hand in hers, looking
fondly, but keenly, into his face, and laying the other hand upon his
shoulder. "George," she said, "George, my darling boy, I hope you have
not brought her very bad news."
He tried to laugh as he loosed his hand, not unkindly, from the old
woman's grasp.
"Do you suppose good news would have brought me here where I am
forbidden--smuggled goods?"
She shook her head sorrowfully.
"At all events, you are alive and well to tell your ill news yourself,
and that is everything to her," said Mrs. Brookes.
The next moment the door opened, and Mrs. Carruthers came in with a
hurried step. George Dallas started forward, and caught her in his
arms.
"Mother! mother!" "My boy, my darling boy!" were the only words spoken
between them, until they were quite alone.
Mrs. Brookes left the room, and the young man was free to explain his
untimely visit.
"I dread to ask what brings you here, George," said his mother, as she
seated herself upon the heavy sofa, and drew him to her side. "I
cannot but rejoice to see you, but I am afraid to ask you why you
come."
A mingling of pleasure and apprehension shook her voice, and
heightened her colour.
"You may well dread to ask me, mother," replied the young man
gloomily. "You may well dread to ask what brings me, outcast as I am,
to your fine home, to the place where your husband is master, and
where my presence is forbidden."
"George, George!" said his mother, in a tone of grief and
remonstrance.
"Well, I know it's no fault of yours, but it's hard to bear for all
that, and I'm not quite such a monster as I am made out to be, to suit
Mr. Carruthers's purposes. I'm not so very much worse than the young
men, mother, whose stepfathers, or whose own fathers either, don't
find it necessary to forbid them the house. But you're afraid of him,
mother, and--"
"George," said Mrs. Carruthers quietly, but sternly, "you did not come
here to see me for the first time in nine months, at the risk of being
turned out of Mr. Carruthers's house, simply to vent your anger upon
him, and to accuse me wrongfully, and taunt me with what I am
powerless to prevent. Tell me what has brought you here, I can stay
with you only a little while; at any moment I may be missed. Tell me
what has brought you against my husband's commands, contrary to my own
entreaties, though it is such a delight to me to see you even so." And
the mother put her arms around the neck of her prodigal son, and
kissed him fondly. Her tears were falling on his rough brown curls.
"Don't cry over me, mother; I'm not worth it; I never was; and you
mustn't go back to your company with pale cheeks and red eyes. There,
there, it's not so bad as it might be, you know; for as nurse says,
I'm alive and well to tell it. The fact is--" He rose, and walked up
and down the room in front of the sofa on which his mother was
sitting, while he spoke. "The fact is, I must have money. Don't start,
don't be frightened. I have not done anything very dreadful, only the
consequences are nearly as fatal as if I had. I have not stolen, or
forged, or embezzled property. I am not rich or respectable enough to
get the chance. But I have lost a large sum at the gaming-table--a sum
I don't possess, and have no other means than this of getting."
"Go on," said his mother. She was deadly pale now, and her hands were
tightly clasped together, as they lay on her lap, white and slender,
against the rich purple of her velvet dress.
He glanced at her, quickened his step, and continued in a hard
reckless tone, but with some difficulty of utterance. "I should have
been utterly ruined but for a friend of mine, who lent me the money.
Play debts must be paid, mother; and Routh, though he's not much
richer than I am, would not let me be completely lost for want of a
helping hand. But he had to borrow the money. He could get it lent to
him. There's no one but him to lend _me_ a shilling, and he did get
it, and I had it and paid it away. But in a short time now he must pay
it back and the interest upon it. Luck has been against us both."
"Against you _both_, George," said Mrs. Carruthers. "Is your friend
also a gambler, then?"
"Yes, he is," said Dallas, roughly; "he is a gambler. All my friends
are gamblers and drunkards, and everything that's bad. What would you
have? Where am I to get pious, virtuous, respectable friends? I
haven't a shilling; I haven't a character. Your husband has taken care
I shall have no credit. Every one knows I am disowned by Mr.
Carruthers, and forbidden to show my face at Poynings; and I'm not
showing it; I'm only in the servants' quarters, you see." Again he
laughed, and again his mother shrank from the sound. "But though my
friend is a gambler, like myself, he helps me when I want help, and
inconveniences himself to do it. Perhaps that's more than respectable
friends--if I had them--would do for me. It's more than I have ever
known respectable friends to do for any one."
Mrs. Carruthers rose, and turned her colourless face upon her son.
There was an angry light in her large hazel eyes, whose dewy
brightness time had not yet greatly harmed. As they confronted each
other, a strong likeness between the mother and son asserted itself.
"George," she said, "you are putting me to needless pain. You have
said enough to show me that you are unchanged. You have come here,
endangering my peace, and compromising yourself, for the purpose, I
suppose, of asking me for money to repay this person who relieved you
from a gambling debt. Is this your business here?"
"Yes," he said shortly, and with a lowering brow.
"Then listen to me. I cannot give you any money." He started, and came
close up to her. "No, George. I have no money at my disposal, and you
ought to know that, as well as I know it. Every shilling I have ever
had of my own I have given you. You know I never grudged it. You know
you had at all; but that leaves me without resources. Mr. Carruthers
will not help you." She grew paler still, and her lips trembled. "I
have asked him many times to alter his determination, a determination
which you cannot say is undeserved, George, but it is in vain. I
might, perhaps, wonder that you would stoop to take assistance from a
man who has such an opinion of you, and who has forbidden you his
house, but that the sad knowledge I have gained of such lives as yours
has taught me that they utterly destroy self-respect--that a
profligate is the meanest of creatures. Calm yourself. There is no use
in giving loose to your temper towards me, George. You have the power
to afflict me still, but you can deceive me no more."
She sat down again, wearily, leaning her arm on the back of the sofa,
and her head on her hand. There was silence for a few moments. Then
she said:
"How much money do you owe this man, George, and when must it be
paid?"
"I owe him a hundred and forty pounds, mother, and it must be paid
this day month."
"A hundred and forty pounds?" repeated Mrs. Carruthers, in a terrified
tone.
"Yes; precisely that sum, and I have not a pound in the world to exist
on in the mean time. I am cleaned out, that's the fact," he went on,
with a dismal attempt at speaking lightly; "and I can't carry on any
longer." But he spoke to inattentive ears. His mother was lost in
thought.
"I cannot give you money," she said at length. "I have not the command
of any."
"This doesn't look like want of it," said her son bitterly, as he
caught a handful of her velvet dress in his grasp, and then dropped it
scornfully.
"My personal expenses are all dictated by Mr. Carruthers, George, and
all known to him. Don't suppose I am free to purchase dress or not, as
I choose. I tell you the exact truth, as I have always told you." She
spoke coldly and seriously, like one whose mind is made up to a great
trial, who hopes neither to alter its character nor to lessen its
weight.
"I only know I must have it," he said; "or I don't see any resource
for me except to cut my throat."
"No, no," returned his mother, "do not say such dreadful things. Give
me time. I will try to find some way of helping you by the time you
must have the money. O my boy, my boy!" she covered her face with her
hands and sobbed.
George Dallas looked at her irresolutely, then came quickly towards
her, and leaned over her, as she sat. "Mother," he said, in low
hurried tones, "mother, trust me once more, little as I deserve it.
Try to help me in this matter; it is life or death to me; and I will
try and do better. I am sick of it all; sick of my own weakness above
and more than all. But I am irretrievably ruined if I don't get this
money. I am quite in Routh's power--and--and--I want to get out of
it."
She looked up curiously at him. Something in the way he said those
words at once alarmed and reassured her.
"In this man's power, George? How? To what extent?"
"I cannot tell you, mother; you would not understand. Don't frighten
yourself about it. It is nothing that money cannot settle. I have had
a lesson now. You shake your head--well, I know I have had many
before, but I _will_ learn from this one."
"I have not the money, George," his mother repeated, "and I cannot
possibly procure it for a little time. You must not stay here."
"I know, I know," he retorted. "You need not re-echo Mr. Carruthers's
interdict. I am going; but surely you can give me a little now; the
price of one of these things would go a long way with me." As he
spoke, he touched, with no rough hand, her earrings and the bracelets
on her right arm.
"They are family jewels, or you should have them, George," Mrs.
Carruthers said in a sad voice. "Give me time, and I will make up the
money for you. I have a little I can give you." She stood up and looked
fixedly at him, her hands resting on his shoulder. The tall and
powerful young man, with his haggard anxious face, his hardened look,
his shabby careless dress, offered a strange contrast to the woman,
whose beauty time had dealt with so lightly, and fortune so
generously. Mrs. Carruthers had been a mere girl when her son was
born, and probably had not been nearly so beautiful as now, when the
calm dignity of position and the power of wealth lent all their
attractions to her perfect face and form.
The habitual seriousness of her expression was but a charm the more,
and in moments of excited feeling like the present she regained the
lustrous brilliancy of the past. Searchingly, fondly, she gazed into
her son's face, as though reading it for traces of the truth of his
promises, seeing in it but too surely indications of the weary,
unsatisfying life he had led, the life which had brought
disappointment to all her dearest maternal hopes. Steadily and
tenderly he looked at her, a world of regret in his eyes. While they
stood thus in brief silence, Mrs. Brookes came in hurriedly.
"You are wanted," he said. "Master is asking for you; he has sent Miss
Clare to your room to see if you are ill."
"I must go, my boy," said Mrs. Carruthers, as she hastily kissed him;
"and you must not stay. Come with me, Ellen, for a moment. Wait here,
George, for what I promised you, and don't travel back to town without
an overcoat." Then she left the room at once, the housekeeper with
her. George stood where she had left him, looking towards the door.
"My dear practical mother," he said to himself, "she is as kind and as
sensible as ever. Wretched about me, but remembering to desire me to
buy a coat! I know she will get me the money somehow, and this _shall_
be the last scrape I will get into. It's no use being melodramatic,
especially when one is all alone, but I here make a solemn promise to
myself that I will keep my promise to _her_."
He sat down by the fire, and remained still and thoughtful. In a few
minutes Mrs. Brookes returned. "Here's the money, Master George," she
said. "I was to give it to you with my mistress's love, and she will
write to you to London."
He took the folded paper from her hand. It was a ten-pound note.
"Thank you, nurse," he said; "and now I will go. I would like to stay
and have a talk with you; but I had better get away, lest any
annoyance should come to my mother through my staying. I'll see you
when you come up to town to the fine house in Mesopotamia. Eh?"
"Lord, Master George, how you do go on! Why, Mr. Carruthers's new
house is the far side of the Park."
"I know, nurse. It's all the same thing. No. No more wine, thank you,
and nothing to eat. Good-bye.--How am I to get out, though? Not
through the window, and up the area wall, am I?"
"I'll show you, Master George. This way."
George Dallas buttoned his coat tightly across his breast, carefully
put on his gloves, and took up his hat. As he followed Mrs. Brookes
through the long stone passages of the basement story, he looked
curiously about him, noting the details of comfort and convenience.
"How much better off than I are my mother's servants!" he thought,
idly rather than bitterly. When they reached a door which opened upon
the court-yard, Mrs. Brookes bade him farewell, not without emotion.
"The great gates are open," she said. "All the servants are either in
the hall or the servants' hall. None of the carriages have been called
yet. You can slip past without being seen; or if any one sees you,
they'll think you belong to the place."
"A serious mistake, dear old woman," said George, with a half-smile,
as he once more shook her hand, and stepped out into the cold and
darkness. A bitter sense of desolation came over him as the door
closed behind him. The court-yard was empty, except of carriages, and
he crossed it quickly, and went through the great gates into the
avenue, which swept round the terrace. Following it, he found himself
brought again by a different route in front of the lighted ball-room;
but he did not delay to glance at the scene.
"So I am going away," he said to himself, "richer by ten pounds and my
mother's promise. Stop, though! There's the sprig of myrtle. I must
not forget or lose the unconscious gift of the great heiress. I wish I
had asked nurse what sort of girl she is. I might have taken time to
do that. It's not so cold as it was." He had been warmed and fed, and
his spirits had risen. It did not take much to raise George Dallas's
spirits, even now when the excesses of his wasted life were beginning
to tell upon him. "I feel quite strong again. The night is lighter;
the village must be a wretched place. I have a great mind to push on
to Amherst. It's only seven miles, and Carruthers can't hear that I
have been there; but he might hear of me at the village, and bother my
mother about it."
He took his way down the avenue and reached the gate, which lay open.
One feeble light twinkled from the upper window of the gate lodge.
Bulger and family had retired to rest, the excitement of the arrivals
being over, and Bulger would leave the gate to take care of itself
until morning. Unquestioned, unseen, George Dallas left Poynings, and,
turning to the right under the park wall, set forth at a steady pace
towards Amherst.
The town of Amherst is very much like the other towns in that part of
the country. Close by the railway station lies the Railway Tavern,
snug and comfortable, with a "quick draught" of homebrewed ale and
bitter beer, thanks to the powers of suction of porters, guards, and
admiring friends of both, who vent their admiration in "standing
glasses round." Not a little of its custom does the Railway Tavern own
to that small plot of waste ground in front of it, where, even on this
desolate night, you might trace the magic circle left by the "ring" of
Signor Quagliasco's Mammoth Circus on its visit last autumn, and the
holes for the pole and tent-pegs, and the most recent ruts on which
were left by the wheels of the cart of the travelling photographer who
"took" the entire town at Christmas, and, in addition to the
photograph, presented each sitter with a blue card embossed with a
scarlet robin bearing in its mouth the legend, "A happy new year to
you." Then villas; Mr. Cobb's, the corn-chandler and coal-merchant,
with a speckled imitation-granite porch, white and black, as if it had
been daubed with a mixture of its owner's flour and coal-dust; Mr.
Lawson's, the attorney, with a big brass plate on its outer gate, and
two stone pine-apples flanking the entrance; Mr. Charlton Biggs's, the
hop-merchant, in all the gentility of a little chaise-house leaning
against the street door, approached by a little carriage-drive so
narrow that the pony had never yet walked up it properly, but had
always been ignominiously "backed" into its tiny home. Then the
outskirts of the town; the Independent Chapel, very square, very
red-faced, and very compact, not to say sat upon; the Literary
Institute, with more green damp on its stuccoed walls than had been
originally intended by its architect, and with fragmentary bills of
"Mr. Lens's Starry Carpet, or the Heavens at a Glance," fluttering in
the night wind from its portico. Merton house comes next, formerly the
stronghold of the Merton-Mertons, the great Kentish family, now Mr.
Bompas's Classical and Commercial Academy, with a full view of the
white dimity bedsteads through the open window, and with "Old Bompas's
Blaggards" inscribed--by the boys of the National School, with whom
the grand Bompasians waged constant warfare--on the doorpost. The
commencement of the town, a mouldy old bay-windowed shop, known to Mr.
Bompas's boys as "Mother Jennings's," and as the repository of "tuck,"
said tuck consisting of stale buns, hardbake, "all sorts," toffee,
treacle, new rolls, sugar mutton-chops elegantly painted and gilt,
sugar rum and gin bottles, whipcord, pegtops, and marbles; then
Bullenger's, apparently a small ironmonger's, but in reality another
lure for the money of Bompas's boys, for in a parlour behind his back
shop Bullenger vended fireworks and half-crown detonating pistols,
catapults, and cross-bows, and all sorts of such-like instruments dear
to predatory boys. Then the ordinary lot of butchers, bakers, tailors,
hosiers, grocers, chemists (Mr. Hotten, member of the Pharmaceutical
Society of Great Britain, also strongly reliant on Bompas's custom for
cigars and hair-oil for the big boys, and bath-pipe and liquorice for
the little ones), and then the police-station; the old gray church,
with its square ivy-covered tower, its billowy graves and its
half-obliterated sun-dial over the porch, and then the fresh green
fields again.
All these particulars George Dallas noted in the morning, when, having
early left the bed he had procured at the inn, he called in at the
station and learned from the friendly porter, who was again engaged in
mending his shoes with tin and tacks, when the next train would start
for London, and where he could find a tailor's shop, walked briskly
through the little town, with feelings very different from those which
had possessed him on his first arrival at the Amherst station. Now,
his step was free and light, he carried his head erect, and though he
occasionally shivered as the cold wind came sweeping over the downs
and gave him a sharp unfriendly nip as it hurried by him in its
progress to the sea, he bore the insult with tolerable fortitude, and
seemed to derive immediate comfort from plunging his hand into his
trousers pocket, where lay the ten-pound note he had received from his
mother. It was there, stiff and crisp to his touch. He had taken it
out and looked at it twice or thrice on the road, but he could not do
that now in the town; he must content himself with touching it, and
the crinkling sound was music in his ear; he had been so long without
money, that he derived the keenest pleasure from the possession of
this actual tangible sum, and felt so little inclined to part with it,
that, though he had passed, and noticed in passing, the tailor's shop
to which he had been recommended by the porter, he still walked on. It
was not until he had made a circuit of the old churchyard at the end
of the town, where even on summer days the wind is generally at play,
and where on winter nights it ramps and rages in a manner terrible to
hear and feel, that George Dallas began to comprehend the necessity of
at once procuring some warmer clothing, and, turning back, made
straight for the tailor's shop.
A neat, clean-looking shop, with "Evans, Tailor," painted over the
window, the effect being slightly spoiled by the knob of the roller
blind, which formed a kind of full-stop in the middle of the word
"Tail, or," and divided it into two unequal portions; with "Evans,
Tailor," blazing from its brass door-plate; with "Evans, Tailor,"
inscribed with many twisted flourishes on its wire blind, where it
emerged coyly from. "Liveries" preceding it, and took hasty refuge in
"Uniforms" at its conclusion. Evans himself behind the counter, a fat,
chubby, rosy little man, with clustering iron-gray hair round his
temples, and a bit of round scalp wig fitting, like the lid of a
teapot, into a bald place on his crown. Apparently he had been all his
life tailoring to such an extent for other people as to have had no
time to attend to himself, for he stood behind the counter this
winter's day in his shirt sleeves, and without his coat.
The old man bowed as George Dallas entered the shop, and asked him
what they could do for him. Dallas replied that he wanted a warm thick
overcoat, "if they'd got such a thing."
"Such a thing! Well, there may be such a thing, perhaps, but I'm not
certain, not being an article kept in stock," replied Mr. Evans,
"which is mostly tarpaulin for the railway guards and stokers,
likewise canal boatmen, which is often customers. A warm thick
overcoat," repeated the old man, "is a article generally made to
order, though I've a sort of a recollection of a something of the kind
returned on our hands in consequence of the party which was staying at
the Lion having left unexpected. Let me see!" he continued, opening
two or three 'drawers. "I ain't so young as I was, sir, and I'm
touched in the wind; and this nasty gas which we've only had this
winter don't do for me, making me bust out in sudden presperation. He!
I thought so! Here's a warm thick overcoat, blue Witney, lined with
plaid; that's a article I can recommend; our own make; we ain't
ashamed of it, you see!" and he pointed to a label stitched inside
just below the collar, where the inevitable "Evans, Tailor," in gilt
letters, was supplemented by the address, "Amherst."
George Dallas took the coat and slipped it on. It fitted tolerably,
and was thick and warm. "What is the price?" he asked.
"We can do that for you at fifty-three and six," said the old man. "It
was a three-pounder, that coat was, when made for the party at the
Lion, but we'll make a reduction now. Fifty-three and six, and our own
make. You couldn't do better."
"I dare say not," said Dallas absently. "Please to change this for
me."
At the sight of the bank note Mr. Evans's pleasant face became a
little clouded. He did not relish the notion of changing notes for
persons with whom he had no previous acquaintance. But after he had
taken the note in his hand and held it between his eyes and the light,
and flattened it out on the counter, his cheerful expression returned,
and he said, "All right, sir. I'll change it and welcome! I know where
you got this note, sir! Ah, you may start, but I do! You got it from
our post-office, lower down the street; here's the post-office stamp
on it which they're compelled to put on every note passing through
their hands. Look, 'Amherst, B. 1, Jan. 30.' Thank you, sir; six and
six's, three and seven is ten; thank you, sir!" and the old man,
having counted the change from a cash-box in a desk at the back of the
shop, hurried round to open the door and bow his customer out.
Within half an hour George Dallas was in the train on his return to
London.