WHAT HE GOT BY IT.
A dressmaker's shop, without a dressmaker to manage it, would be, Angela
considered, in some perplexity, like a ship without a steersman. She
therefore waited with some impatience the promised visit of Rebekah
Hermitage, whom she was to "get cheap," according to Mr. Bunker, on
account of her Sabbatarian views.
She came in the evening, while Angela was walking on the Green with the
sprightly cabinet-maker. It was sunset, and Angela had been remarking to
her companion, with a sort of irrational surprise, that the phenomena
coincident with the close of the day are just as brilliantly colored and
lavishly displayed for the squalid East as for the luxurious West.
Perhaps, indeed, there are not many places in London where sunset does
produce such good effects as at Stepney Green. The narrow strip, so
called, in shape resembles too nearly a closed umbrella or a thickish
walking-stick; but there are trees in it, and beds of flowers, and seats
for those who wish to sit, and walks for those who wish to walk. And the
better houses of the Green--Bormalack's was on the west, or dingy
side--are on the east, and face the setting sun. They are of a good age,
at least a hundred and fifty years old; they are built of a warm red
brick, and some have doors ornamented with the old-fashioned shell, and
all have an appearance of solid respectability, which makes the rest of
Stepney proud of them. Here, in former days, dwelt the aristocracy of
the parish; and on this side was the house taken by Angela for her
dressmaking institution, the house in which her grandfather was born.
The reason why the sunsets are more splendid and the sunrises brighter
at Stepney than at the opposite end of London, is, that the sun sets
behind the great bank of cloud which forever lies over London town. This
lends his departure to the happy dwellers of the East strange and
wonderful effects. Now, when he rises, it is naturally in the East,
where there is no cloud of smoke to hide the brightness of his face.
The Green this evening was crowded: it is not so fashionable a promenade
as Whitechapel Road, but, on the other hand, it possesses the charm of
comparative quiet. There is no noise of vehicles, but only the shouting
of children, the loud laughter of some _gaillard_ 'prentice, the coy
giggle of the young lady to whom he has imparted his last merry jape,
the loud whispers of ladies who are exchanging confidences about their
complaints and the complaints of their friends, and the musical laugh of
girls. The old people had all crept home; the mothers were at home
putting their children to bed; the fathers were mostly engaged with the
evening pipe, which demands a chair within four walls and a glass of
something; the Green was given up to youth; and youth was principally
given up to love-making.
"In Arcadia," said Harry, "every nymph is wooed, and every swain----"
He was interrupted by the arrival of his uncle, who pushed his way
through the crowd with his usual important bustle, followed by a "young
person."
"I looked for you at Mrs. Bormalack's," he said to Angela
reproachfully, "and here you are--with this young man, as usual. As if
my time was no object to you!"
"Why not with this young man, Mr. Bunker?" asked Angela.
He did not explain his reasons for objecting to her companion, but
proceeded to introduce his companion.
"Here she is, Miss Kennedy," he said. "This is Rebekah Hermitage; I've
brought her with me to prevent mistakes. You may take her on my
recommendation. Nobody in the neighborhood of Stepney wants a better
recommendation than mine. One of Bunker's, they say, and they ask no
more."
"What a beautiful, what an enviable reputation!" murmured his nephew.
"Oh, that I were one of Bunker's!"
Mr. Bunker glared at him, but answered not; never, within his present
experience, had he found himself at a loss to give indignation words. On
occasion, he had been known to swear "into shudders" the immortal gods
who heard him. To swear at this nephew, however, this careless,
sniggering youth, who looked and talked like a "swell," would, he felt,
be more than useless. The boy would only snigger more. He would have
liked knocking him down, but there were obvious reasons why this was not
to be seriously contemplated.
He turned to the girl who had come with him.
"Rebekah," he said with condescension, "you may speak up; I told your
father I would stand by you, and I will."
"Do not, at least," said Angela, in her stateliest manner, "begin by
making Miss Hermitage suppose she will want your support."
She saw before her a girl about two- or three-and-twenty years of age.
She was short of stature and sturdy. Her complexion was dark, with black
hair and dark eyes, and these were bright. A firm mouth and square chin
gave her a pugnacious appearance. In fact, she had been fighting all her
life, more desperately even than the other girls about her, because she
was heavily handicapped by the awkwardness of her religion.
"Mr. Bunker," said this young person, who certainly did not look as if
she wanted any backing up, "tells me you want a forewoman."
"You want a forewoman," echoed the agent, as if interpreting for her.
"Yes, I do," Angela replied. "I know, to begin with, all about your
religious opinions."
"She knows," said the agent, standing between the two parties, as if
retained for the interests of both--"she knows, already, your religious
opinions."
"Very well, miss." Rebekah looked disappointed at losing a chance of
expounding them. "Then, I can only say, I can never give way in the
matter of truth."
"In truth," said the agent, "she's as obstinate as a pig."
"I do not expect it," replied Angela, feeling that the
half-a-crown-an-hour man was really a stupendous nuisance.
"She does not expect it," echoed Mr. Bunker, turning to Rebekah. "What
did I tell you? Now you see the effect of my recommendations."
"Take it off the wages," said Rebekah, with an obvious effort, which
showed how vital was the importance of the pay. "Take it off the wages,
if you like; and, of course, I can't expect to labor for five days and
be paid for six; but on the Saturday, which is the Sabbath-day, I do no
work therein, neither I, nor my man-servant, nor my maid-servant, nor my
ox, nor my ass."
"Neither her man-servant, nor her maid-servant, nor her ox, nor her
ass," repeated the agent solemnly.
"There is the Sunday, however," said Angela.
"What have you got to say about Sunday now?" asked Mr. Bunker, with a
change of front.
"Of all the days that's in the week," interpolated the sprightly one, "I
dearly love but one day--and that's the day----"
Rebekah, impatient of this frivolity, stopped it at once.
"I do as little as I can," she said, "on Sunday, because of the weaker
brethren. The Sunday we keep as a holiday."
"Well----" Angela began rather to envy this young woman, who was a clear
gainer of a whole day by her religion; "well, Miss Hermitage, will you
come to me on trial? Thank you; we can settle about deductions
afterward, if you please. And if you will come to-morrow--that is right.
Now, if you please to take a turn with me, we will talk things over
together; goodnight, Mr. Bunker."
She took the girl's arm and led her away, being anxious to get Bunker
out of sight. The aspect of this agent annoyed and irritated her almost
beyond endurance; so she left him with his nephew.
"One of Bunker's!" Harry repeated softly.
"You here!" growled the uncle, "dangling after a girl when you ought to
be at work! How long, I should like to know, are we hard-working Stepney
folk to be troubled with an idle, good-for-nothing vagabond? Eh, sir?
How long? And don't suppose that I mean to do anything for you when your
money is all gone. Do you hear, sir? do you hear?"
"I hear, my uncle!" As usual, the young man laughed; he sat upon the arm
of a garden-seat, with his hands in his pockets, and laughed an
insolent, exasperating laugh. Now, Mr. Bunker in all his life had never
seen the least necessity or occasion for laughing at anything at all,
far less at himself. Nor, hitherto, had any one dared to laugh at him.
"Sniggerin' peacock!" added Mr. Bunker fiercely, rattling a bunch of
keys in his pocket.
Harry laughed again, with more _abandon_. This uncle of his, who
regarded him with so much dislike, seemed a very humorous person.
"Connection by marriage," he said. "There is one question I have very
much wished to put to you. When you traded me away, now three-and-twenty
years ago, or thereabouts--you remember the circumstances, I dare say,
better than I can be expected to do--_what did you get for me?_"
Then Bunker's color changed, his cheeks became quite white. Harry
thought it was the effect of wrath, and went on.
"Half a crown an hour, of course, during the negotiations, which I dare
say took a week--that we understand; but what else? Come, my uncle, what
else did you get?"
It was too dark for the young man to perceive the full effect of this
question--the sudden change of color escaped his notice; but he observed
a strange and angry light in his uncle's eyes, and he saw that he opened
his mouth once or twice as if to speak, but shut his lips again without
saying a word; and Harry was greatly surprised to see his uncle
presently turn on his heel and walk straight away.
"That question seems to be a facer; it must be repeated whenever the
good old man becomes offensive. I wonder what he _did_ get for me?"
As for Mr. Bunker, he retired to his own house in Beaumont Square,
walking with quick steps and hanging head. He let himself in with his
latch-key, and turned into his office, which, of course, was the first
room of the ground-floor.
It was quite dark now, save for the faint light from the street-gas, but
Mr. Bunker did not want any light.
He sat down and rested his face on his hands, with a heavy sigh. The
house was empty, because his housekeeper and only servant was out.
He sat without moving for half an hour or so; then he lifted his head
and looked about him--he had forgotten where he was and why he came
there--and he shuddered.
Then he hastily lit a candle, and went upstairs to his own bedroom. The
room had one piece of furniture, not always found in bedrooms; it was a
good-sized fireproof safe, which stood in the corner. Mr. Bunker placed
his candle on the safe, and stooping down began to grope about with his
keys for the lock. It took some time to find the keyhole; when the safe
was opened, it took longer to find the papers which he wanted, for these
were at the very back of all. Presently, however, he lifted his head
with a bundle in his hand.
Now, if we are obliged to account for everything, which ought not to be
expected, and is more than one asks of scientific men, I should account
for what followed by remarking that the blood is apt to get into the
brains of people, especially elderly people, and, above all, stout,
elderly people, when they stoop for any length of time; and that history
records many remarkable manifestations of the spirit world which have
followed a posture of stooping too prolonged. It produces, in fact, a
condition of brain beloved by ghosts. There is the leading case of the
man at Cambridge, who, after stooping for a book, saw the ghost of his
own bed-maker at a time when he knew her to be in the bosom of her
family eating up his bread-and-butter and drinking his tea. Rats have
been seen by others--troops of rats--as many rats as followed the piper,
where there were no rats; and there is even the recorded case of a man
who saw the ghost of himself, which prognosticated dissolution, and, in
fact, killed him exactly fifty-two years after the event. So that,
really, there is nothing at all unusual in the fact that Mr. Bunker saw
something when he lifted his head. The remarkable thing is that he saw
the very person of whom he had been thinking ever since his nephew's
question--no other than his deceased wife's sister; he had never loved
her at all, or in the least desired to marry her, which makes the case
more remarkable still; and she stood before him just as if she was
alive, and gazed upon him with reproachful eyes.
He behaved with great coolness and presence of mind. Few men would have
shown more bravery. He just dropped the candle out of one hand and the
papers out of the other, and fell back upon the bed with a white face
and quivering lips. Some men would have run--he did not; in fact, he
could not. His knees instinctively knew that it is useless to run from a
ghost, and refused to aid him.
"Caroline!" he groaned.
As he spoke the figure vanished, making no sign and saying no word.
After a while, seeing that the ghost came no more, Mr. Bunker pulled
himself together. He picked up the papers and the candle and went slowly
downstairs again, turning every moment to see if his sister-in-law came
too. But she did not, and he went to the bright gas-lit back parlor,
where his supper was spread.
After supper he mixed a glass of brandy-and-water, stiff. After drinking
this he mixed another, and began to smoke a pipe while he turned over
the papers.
"He can't have meant anything," he said. "What should the boy know? What
did the gentleman know? Nothing. What does anybody know? Nothing. There
is nobody left. The will was witnessed by Mr. Messenger and Bob Coppin.
Well, one of them is dead, and as for the other----" [he paused and
winced]--"as for the other, it is five-and-twenty years since he was
heard of, so he's dead, too; of course, he's dead."
Then he remembered the spectre and he trembled. For suppose Caroline
meant coming often; this would be particularly disagreeable. He
remembered a certain scene where, three-and-twenty years before, he had
stood at a bedside while a dying woman spoke to him; the words she said
were few, and he remembered them quite well, even after so long a time,
which showed his real goodness of heart.
"You are a hard man, Bunker, and you think too much of money; and you
were not kind to your wife. But I'm going too, and there is nobody left
to trust my boy to, except you. Be good to him, Bunker, for your dead
wife's sake."
He remembered, too, how he had promised to be good to the boy, not
meaning much by the words, perhaps, but softened by the presence of
death.
"It is not as if the boy was penniless," she said; "his houses will pay
you for his keep, and to spare. You will lose nothing by him. Promise me
again."
He remembered that he had promised a second time that he would be good
to the boy; and he remembered, too, how the promise seemed then to
involve great expense in canes.
"If you break the solemn promise," she said, with feminine prescience,
"I warn you that he shall do you an injury when he grows up. Remember
that."
He did remember it now, though he had quite forgotten this detail a long
while ago. The boy had returned; he was grown up; he could do him an
injury, _if he knew how_. Because he only had to ask his uncle for an
account of those houses. Fortunately, he did not know. Happily, there
was no one to tell him. With his third tumbler Mr. Bunker became quite
confident and reassured; with his fourth he felt inclined to be merry,
and to slap himself on the back for wide-awakedness of the rarest kind.
With his fifth, he resolved to go upstairs and tell Caroline that unless
she went and told her son, no one would. He carried part of this
resolution into effect; that is to say, he went to his bedroom, and his
housekeeper, unobserved herself, had the pleasure of seeing her master
ascending the stairs on his hands and feet--a method which offers great
advantages to a gentleman who has had five tumblers of brandy-and-water.
When he got there, and had quite succeeded in shutting the door--not
always so easy a thing as it looks--Caroline was no longer visible. He
could not find her anywhere, though he went all round the room twice, on
all-fours, in search of her.
The really remarkable part of this story is, that she has never paid a
visit to her son at all.
Meantime, the strollers on the green were grown few. Most of them had
gone home; but the air was warm, and there were still some who lingered.
Among them were Angela and the girl who was to be her forewoman.
When Rebekah found that her employer was not apparently of those who try
to cheat, or bully or cajole her subordinates, she lost her combative
air, and consented to talk about things. She gave Angela a great deal of
information about the prospects of her venture, which were gloomy, as
she thought, as the competition was so severe. She also gave her an
insight into details of a practical nature concerning the conduct of a
dressmakery, into which we need not follow her.
Angela discovered before they parted that she had two sides to her
character: on one side she was a practical and practised woman of work
and business; on the other she was a religious fanatic.
"We wait," she said, "for the world to come round to us. Oh! I know we
are but a little body and a poor folk. Father is almost alone; but what
a thing it is to be the appointed keepers of the truth! Come and hear
us, Miss Kennedy. Father always converts any one who will listen to him.
Oh, do listen!"
Then she, too, went away, and Angela was left alone in the quiet place.
Presently she became aware that Harry was standing beside her.
"Don't let us go home yet," he said; "Bormalack's is desperately
dull--you can picture it all to yourself. The professor has got a new
trick; Daniel Fagg is looking as if he had met with more disappointment;
her ladyship is short of temper, because the case is getting on so
slowly; and Josephus is sighing over a long pipe; and Mr. Maliphant is
chuckling to himself in the corner. On the whole, it is better here.
Shall we remain a little longer in the open air, Miss Kennedy?"
He looked dangerous. Angela, who had been disposed to be expansive,
froze.
"We will have one more turn, if you please, Mr. Goslett." She added
stiffly, "Only remember--so long as you don't think of 'keeping
company.'"
"I understand perfectly, Miss Kennedy. 'Society' is a better word than
'company;' let us keep that, and make a new departure for Stepney
Green."