LIFE—AND DEATH.
Jack Dadd was more like a girl than ever—more like even than the
puniest of pink and white complexioned lads—with whom to associate the
idea of a bold, rude, fox-hunter or a slashing soldier, or a reckless
buccaneer, as they had been represented in Jack’s favourite songs,
would have been the height of absurdity, pathetic in the very wildness
of the imagination.
He was wasted and worn to skin and bone, and faded to the colour of
blanched wax, lying with his eyes shut, though he was not sleeping. Yet
Jack was considered to have got the turn, to be in a fair, though still
a precarious, way of recovery. Oliver had not altogether resigned his
functions; he was with Jack this night again, sitting reading at a
little distance from the bed, when he was startled by hearing a piping
voice address him, and looking round, he saw Jack’s eyes wide open,
with reason in their glance, fixed upon him. It was a critical moment,
for between delirium and sheer feebleness, Jack had not before shown
any consciousness of Oliver’s identity.
‘Noll,’ said Jack, ‘don’t you remember how I won your taws that time?’
referring to a famous, far-off, game of marbles in the Friarton
playground.
Oliver was immensely relieved. ‘Yes, Jack, you beat me to sticks,’ he
admitted candidly, while Jack emitted the ghost of a chuckle at the
recollection of his old victory.
But Jack’s next speech was not so reassuring. ‘Constable,’ said Jack,
‘I’ve often been guilty of rank impudence to you.’
‘Gammon!’ said Oliver; ‘shut up for the rest of the night, old boy; let
me turn you round, and do you try and get another sleep, which will set
you on your pins again in no time, and let me finish my book.’
But Jack’s hour for conversation had come, and he would not be
silenced. ‘I say, Constable, I hope I may get over this bout, and
be let off this time, to live and make up for some things I’ve done
unlike—unlike a gentleman.’
Heaven help the lad! who was too shy in the middle of his forwardness
to say a Christian, the young counter-jumper who had his own standard
for a man and a gentleman.
‘You may live to behave like a prince, Jack, if you’ll only be careful
and not exhaust yourself. Here; swallow this stuff, and snooze away.’
But Jack was at his confessions again, more briskly than before,
the moment he had taken the stimulant. ‘I wonder if anybody but the
poor old guv’nor, and the mother, and perhaps a good fellow like
you, Constable, would care whether I hopped the twig or not? I don’t
deserve it from some people. There’s ’Liza—’Liza Polley—’Liza might
not have always known her own mind, or rather, her friends went in and
bamboozled her, and put a lot of nonsense into her head, but I was not
quite fair to ’Liza. I came down hard upon her, when, as it turned out,
you were not going after her, and when, if you will believe me,’ said
Jack, with emphasis, succeeding in raising himself on his elbow, ‘she
never cared a rap for you, it was me she cared for all the time—poor
’Liza!’ ended Jack, falling back with a sigh.
The delicious _naïveté_ of the assertion pleased Oliver greatly, while
he hastened to give it a handsome corroboration. ‘I am profoundly
convinced of the truth of what you say, Jack; and if it would not bring
on a fresh attack of fever, I might generously tell you in return that
Miss ’Liza Polley met me at break of day the other morning, daring the
wrath of her mother, just to hear the last news of your health.’
‘Did she, though?’ exclaimed Jack, with his poor face brightening into
a dim glow of satisfaction; ‘and ’Liza is as frightened as a hare while
her mother has been like a she-bear that has been robbed of her whelps,
since she sent ’Mily up the spout.’ There was a little pause. Oliver
hoped Jack was dropping off to sleep. ‘I’ll not forget it of ’Liza
Polley,’ Jack spoke again, with drowsy, lordly magnanimity; ‘it was
the best errand she ever ran on. I’ll act on the square to her—on the
square all round, please God. And as for Mrs. Polley, won’t the guv’nor
make her squeak to a different tune, when he calls to pop the question
to the mother for me?’
Yes, Jack was going to recover, to be a man instead of a boy—a good
man ‘please God,’ as he had said simply. And it would please the Father
of Lights, the source and the reward of all goodness.
Death and desolation were distanced for once. The strange, sad sights,
sounds, and memories which the King of Terrors, even though his sceptre
has been wrested from his grasp, still brings with him, and leaves
behind him wherever his ‘pale feet’ pass, would be changed for the
cheery, sweet, common tokens of returning health and life: the fresh,
open air, everyday work, the familiar faces of friends no longer
anxious or averted.
Oliver felt it like a great boon to himself. He went to ’Mily Polley’s
marriage with much better spirit and hope, since there was no longer
the least probability of his having to attend Jack Dadd’s funeral.
Oliver represented ’Mily’s circle, though Sam Cobbe gave her away. An
old friend lent her his countenance when she needed it. For she was
conscience-stricken and shame-smitten through all her defiance. She was
really smarting keenly under the abandonment of her kindred. She was
awaking silently—and when had ’Mily ever been silent before?—and sadly,
already, even before he had made her his wife, to the utter poverty and
short-lived nature of the passion which had existed between her and the
man for whom she had—not generously but wilfully, sacrificed all that
women hold dear. For this reason she was susceptible to the compliment
of Oliver’s presence even more than to the show of her gaudy blue silk
gown and desperately smart bonnet and veil. She thanked him with an
earnestness which struck Oliver in ’Mily, and which he considered far
out of proportion to the cause of the thanks, in the last words she
said to him. She went with her husband straight from the church to the
railway-station, as the Cobbes could not be expected to furnish the
shabbiest version of a wedding-breakfast, and left immediately for
Manchester. There was no trace of the couple when Oliver followed them
to the station in the course of a quarter of an hour, intending to take
a short journey on his own affairs.
Oliver Constable had his foot on a carriage step when the
station-master hurried up, white and scared-looking, struggling to
maintain his composure. He whispered to Oliver, ‘There’s been an
accident to the 11.30 train north, close to Medlar Bridge. I’ve just
had word. There’s folk hurt. All that can help is wanted immediately;
but there’s no use driving the town wild, and bringing out a pack of
useless, frantic people as long as it can be prevented. Would you mind,
sir, coming with me and the nearest doctor and the surface-men?’
‘All right,’ consented Oliver, in reference to what was evidently all
wrong. He, too, was agitated by the suddenness and shock of the message.
It was not till the little party had started and aroused the suspicion
of a few idlers, though another quarter of an hour would pass before
the vague alarm took shape, spread abroad and thrilled the town, that
Oliver recollected the 11.30 train north was the very train by which
the newly-married pair were to travel. He told himself the next moment
that amongst the hundreds in the train there was little likelihood that
the Birts should be the particular victims.
The place where the last portion of the train had run off the line,
with the usual amount of overthrow and wreck, lay about midway
between Friarton and the next station, from which assistance had
already come, before the Friarton station-master and his band of
helpers arrived. Oliver saw only the _débris_ of broken carriages
and a throng of excited but uninjured people, when he leapt from the
engine, on reaching his destination. ‘Not so bad as had been feared
from the earliest report,’ Oliver heard proclaimed by various voices
immediately. Two of the smashed carriages were found to have been
empty. Only one carriage and the guard’s van were occupied. A woman had
been killed, and five or six persons more or less hurt.’
Oliver Constable passed through the eager speakers, looking on every
side for the Birts, half expecting to find ’Mily in hysterics if she
had happened to be in a carriage near those which had broken loose, and
if she had seen anything of the accident.
Before he was aware he found himself close to the waiting-room into
which the sufferers had been carried. A railway servant at the door,
taking it for granted that Oliver was seeking for the room and had a
right to enter, beckoned him in before he could think where he was
going, among the doctors and their patients—fainting or groaning, while
pulses were felt, heads bandaged, and limbs set.
Oliver prepared to retreat, but first he cast a quick glance round.
Stay! Was not that Birt in the soiled, jaunty new clothes for which
’Mily had paid, out of her little bit of money?
The man did not look much the worse, in spite of the outcry he was
making over what a doctor was coolly pooh-poohing as a trifle of a
broken collar-bone.
But where was ’Mily?
In another moment Oliver learnt the incredible fact that Birt did not
know. The bridegroom had been smoking with the guard in the van when
the accident happened, and ever since then—speaking from Birt’s point
of view—he had been in far too bad a way to enquire after anybody. But
no doubt she was somewhere outside, gaping and screeching with the
rest of the women. She ought to be looked up at once—Birt grumbled
crossly, taking the first word of scolding—to see if she could not make
a beginning in minding her duty, and trying to do something for him
when he was in mortal agony and as sick as a dog.
Oliver, with his heart standing still, took one step towards the door
of another room which was kept closed. An elderly woman turned the key
in the lock and let him go in. Alas! yes; there lay all that was mortal
of ’Mily, the poor mangled body decently composed, covered over and
put away from fascinated, appalled gaze, or rude, gloating scrutiny—in
the very dress she had so often pictured herself as wearing, that she
had bidden Oliver notice particularly, which she had, not three hours
before, gone to church in. The chubby face was little altered, except
for the closed eyes, since it had been spared, while death must have
proved instantaneous. With no friend by her side, not missed, though
she was in her bridal glory, till Oliver sought her out, the disastrous
end of ’Mily’s foolish young life had indeed come swiftly.
In the grief and oppression with which Oliver set about making the
necessary arrangements, he could yet believe that, as ’Mily had said of
Fan’s fate, so her own might have been more miserable still.
It was a wise choice made by the warrior and poet king—rather to fall
into God’s than into man’s hands. To die in an instant, though it were
on her marriage morning, in her bridal finery, when her heart was
softened in the act of quitting Friarton, thinking as she thought in
all probability—with regretful tenderness of her mother and family, and
repenting of her misconduct, while, at the same time, all faith and
hope in her husband had not been crushed out of her, was surely better
than to live on at the mercy of a man like Birt, to be dragged down by
him into lower and lower depths, to risk becoming at last as heartless
and worthless as himself.
Oliver had a worse ordeal to face before night than that of seeking out
’Mily on her marriage day, as the woman killed in the railway accident.
Mrs. Polley sent over an express to Friarton Mill to bid Mr. Constable
come into the town and speak to her. In other circumstances it would
have been an exacting, unreasonable demand; as it was Oliver, like any
man with a true man’s heart, obeyed it as he would have obeyed the
behest of the Queen.
He found the Polleys’ shop with the shutters up in the middle of the
afternoon, for the first time in his recollection. Mrs. Polley was
not in the back shop; she was in her daughters’ room, to which she
had gone, with rapid unsteady feet, the moment a rash or stolid
customer had pushed forward to the counter, and, in place of giving
an order, had told the tragedy in all its raw anguish and frightful
force, without waiting to weigh words, or to secure the presence of
some solemnly commissioned, skilled, and pitying comforter. The mother
was sitting by the side of the bed in which ’Mily had been wont to
sleep. Mrs. Polley’s hard-working hand was mechanically smoothing down
the crochet quilt, which had been one of the few feats of industry
accomplished by the joint efforts of the sisters while they were still
at school, and in which ’Mily, though the youngest, had played the
foremost part. The first married of the three workers was to have
carried off the quilt, but the bargain had not been kept in spite of
’Mily’s double title to the prize.
The heavy flush had not grown lighter on Mrs. Polley’s cheeks. She
continued dry-eyed and silent, while all the eyes around her were dim,
and the faces swollen with crying, and as Oliver—the last person there
who had seen and spoken with ’Mily—entered the room, a fresh burst of
lamentation broke from her sisters, even her father groaned aloud, and
bowed his face over his shaking hands.
Oliver took Mrs. Polley’s hand reverently. ‘I am very sorry,’ he
muttered. ‘She could not have suffered. She is in better hands even
than in those of the friends who loved her best. I have done all that
was required.’
‘Mr. Oliver,’ said Mrs. Polley, in a loud, harsh voice which startled
everybody, ‘I have sent for you in case I should not live another
night. How do I know when them as I’ve seen full of youth and life and
gladness is took in the twinkling of an eye? I want to thank you before
I die, and I may never have another chance. Yes, I know all you have
done for my ’Mily this day. You have stood beside her—both as a bride
and as a corpse. When every friend she had gave my gal up, and left her
to be despised and trodden upon, when the mother as bore and had turned
her adrift, that so her folly might grow into sin, showed no mercy, you
came to her and let her feel she had one friend left on earth, so that
she might be able to believe that she had still a Father and Saviour
in heaven. You have ordered her coffin and undertook, if necessary, to
pay for it, and are ready to see all that the cruel, grinding, tearing
wheels left of her, laid in it, and to help to carry her yourself to
the churchyard. Mr. Oliver, my thanks ain’t worth much; for aught that
I know, they may be no better than ill wishes and curses, since I was
the unnatural mother as shut ’Mily out into the street, where she had
no refuge, save the base villain that had decoyed her from her mother’s
roof. Hold your tongue, Polley, and you gals, and you, sir, though you
were thrice my pastor,’ addressing Mr. Holland, as he came softly and
sorrowfully into the room. She resisted fiercely all attempts of her
frightened husband and children and the other awed bystanders to stay
her wild self-accusation. ‘I will speak out. I’ve sung my own praises
and been my own trumpeter many’s the time. I’ll publish likewise my
barbarous cruelty. It was I as denounced my own daughter and condemned
her to destruction and an early grave. So what would it serve you, Mr.
Oliver, though you were to let me go down on my knees and bless you,
because you had more pity on my ’Mily—my bright, clever ’Mily, that is
now as cold and still as a clod of the walley, than her wicked mother
had on her poor, thoughtless child?’
‘You loved her better than yourself, all the time you blamed her most,’
Oliver told the miserable woman. ‘It was your very love for her, and
pride in her, which made you hard. She knew that then; she knows it
better now.’
Something in the words spoken almost at random, opened the closed
floodgate of tears which quenched the frenzy blazing into a devouring
flame, and saved the stout heart from breaking. ‘Yes, I were fond
and proud of my ’Mily, with good reason,’ protested Mrs. Polley more
softly, though the softness was expressed by the deep sobs which rent
her breast, and the torrents of tears that gushed from her eyes. ‘There
was none of the other gals fit to hold a candle to her. She were that
smart, my little ’Mily, she could run and speak by the time she was
eighteen months. I’ve seen her a sitting up rosy and full of roguery,
playing with the pillows in this here bed, when other children would
have been lying like so many little logses. Her fingers and her tongue
alike were that clever! She had finished her piece and begun another of
this very bed quilt long before Ann or ’Liza had got half through with
either of theirs—and her the youngest and only in her first quarter at
the school. “I’ll make them stand about, mother, she would say to me,”
with one of her merry laughs; “and I’ll wager I’ll be married first, as
well as first done with my bit of the crochet, and get the quilt all to
myself.” So she has been married first, and she has died first, leaving
me and her father behind, as ought by rights to have gone long before
her. Oh! ’Mily, ’Mily, if I could but have died for you!’
Poor young ’Mily Polley’s death on her marriage morning caused a great
revulsion in the feelings which had been entertained towards her in
her native town. Her awful fate wiped out, in human eyes, the sum of
her transgressions. Her death was regarded—not so much in the light
of retribution as of atonement. A tender veil of commiseration and
charity was drawn over her offences till they were in a fair way to
be forgotten as well as forgiven. Her memory was likely to survive in
Friarton and appeal to all gentle, romantic hearts for generations to
come—not as that of the erring girl, but as that of the newly-made wife
who perished in the first hours of her wifehood.
’Mily’s intimate associates were forced to acknowledge remorsefully the
little allowance they had made for her temptations, and the unanimity
with which they had forsaken her in her humiliation.
Even some of the townspeople who had only noticed and inveighed against
the girl as an exceedingly vulgar, pert, giddy creature, experienced an
uncomfortable conviction that her opportunities of learning to become
more civilised, modest, and steady had been limited, and, such as
they were, might have been a good deal counteracted by the old feuds
and jealousies between classes. At the same time the blithe ring of
her voice as it had floated accidentally to them, the light fall of
her footstep when she had passed them, lingered in the ears of these
judges, and smote them with the realisation of how young this ’Mily
Polley must have been, when her detractors had not thought it beneath
their superior age, rank, and refinement, to enlarge on her sins
against good taste. ’Mily had her revenge in this fact, that whereas
she and her set had been heartily despised, sharply ridiculed, and
religiously shunned by those more gently bred ladies of Friarton, who
held it as a pious duty to work for, bear with, instruct and assist the
laziest and most reckless of the poor in the town, very few could now
afford to scorn ’Mily. All except the smallest and grossest minds saw
that the solemnity of death, even without its tragedy—as in ’Mily’s
piteous case—invested the girl with a simple dignity in her grave. But
it was a pity that not more men and women had possessed the larger,
gentler eyes to recognise that the sacredness of life had also bestowed
on her worth and importance—even while she still bounced about her
mother’s shop, and flounced along the streets.
Remorse, in its slightest manifestation of doubt and discontent with
one’s self, is not an agreeable sensation, therefore the townspeople of
Friarton, who, like the rest of the world, greatly preferred to feel at
ease in their own minds, if not gently titillated with a consciousness
of having done their best in the matters of justice and mercy, began
to look around them in order to discover any loophole of escape from
the painful impression that they had been hard and contemptuous to
’Mily Polley and perhaps hounded her on—for girls are sensitive as well
as perverse—to her undoing. They were remarkably successful in their
search. For one man had, as it were, redeemed the humane character of
Friarton. Oliver Constable had paid respect to the girl from the first,
and shown her mercy to the last. He had acted as the representative
of her neighbours, and so removed, in a great measure, the lurking
self-reproach from their consciences. And it was the same Oliver who
had gone in for nursing old Dadd’s son, and pulled him through his
fever.
It did seem as if Oliver Constable had come home from watching by his
sister’s death-bed to save the life of Jack Dadd and to speak a parting
word of forgiveness and God-speed to ’Mily Polley, so as to deliver
the whole town from the charge of selfish cowardice and intolerant
persecution. If so, what sort of man could he really be who had
received such a commission and given himself to its fulfilment?
The reaction which had set in for poor ’Mily extended to Oliver.
His fellow-townsmen commenced to conceive an altogether different
impression of him, to exalt and make much of him, to canonise him—not
merely before a hundred years had elapsed, but in his very lifetime.
This experience is comparatively rare, still it happens sometimes that
just as men’s sins occasionally go before them to judgment, so men’s
patient continuance in well-doing is observed and awakens a response in
their brethren before death has set its seal to virtue.
In the meantime Oliver was perfectly unaware of the sudden revolution
in the sentiments of the town towards him, so that in place of being
unpopular and lightly esteemed—not to say grossly slandered—he had
sprung at once to the height of popularity and general respect, among
those who were not particularly ashamed of thus turning their coats,
after they had so recently decried and abused their champion and hero.
The only thing which struck Oliver as he walked along the streets of
Friarton, in the drizzle and mud of November, was, that in spite of
the season and the weather, he was constantly meeting friends and
acquaintances, and that not merely everybody had something to say to
him, but that all men and women were in the best humour, overflowing
with geniality, as if they were reflecting June sunshine rather than
November fog.