IN WHICH THE WIDOW HOLDS CONVERSE WITH A CAPTAIN, MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE
OF A YOUNG MAN, AND RECEIVES A TELEGRAPHIC SHOCK, WHICH ENDS IN A
RAILWAY JOURNEY.
Mrs Captain Tipps was, as we have said, a thin old lady of an
excessively timid temperament. She was also, as we have shown,
impulsively kind in disposition. Moreover, she was bird-like in aspect
and action. We would not have it supposed, however, that her features
were sharp. On the contrary, they were neat and rounded and well
formed, telling of great beauty in youth, but her little face and mouth
were of such a form that one was led irresistibly to expect to hear her
chirp; she fluttered rather than walked and twittered rather than
talked. Altogether she was a charming little old lady, with a pair of
bead-like eyes as black as sloes. Happy that captain--a sea-captain, by
the way, long since dead--round whom she had fluttered in days gone bye,
and happy that son Joseph round whom, when at home, she fluttered now.
But Joseph was not often at home at the time we write of. He was an
honest soul--a gentle, affectionate man with a handsome face, neat
dapper little frame, something like his mother in many ways, yet not
unmanly. He was too earnest, simple, unassuming, and unaffected to be
that. He was a railway clerk, and had recently been appointed to
Langrye station, about fifty miles from Clatterby, which necessitated
his leaving his mother's roof; but Mrs Tipps consoled herself with the
intention of giving up her little villa and going to live at Langrye.
Poverty, after the captain's death, had seized upon the widow, and held
her tightly down during the whole of that period when Joseph and his
only sister Netta were being educated. But Mrs Tipps did her duty
bravely by them. She was a practically religious woman, and tried most
earnestly to rule her life in accordance with the blessed Word of God.
She trained up her children "in the way that they should go," in
thorough reliance on the promise that "they would not depart from it
when they were old." She accepted the command, "owe no man anything but
to love one another," as given to herself as well as to the world at
large--hence she kept out of debt, and was noted for deeds of kindness
wherever she went.
But she was pinched during this period--terribly pinched--no one knew
how severely save her daughter Netta, to whom she had been in the habit
of confiding all her joys and sorrows from the time that the child could
form any conception of what joy or sorrow meant. But Mrs Tipps did not
weep over her sorrows, neither did she become boisterous over her joys.
She was an equable, well-balanced woman in everything except the little
matter of her nervous system. Netta was a counterpart of her mother.
As time went on expenses increased, and living on small means became
more difficult, so that Mrs Tipps was compelled to contemplate leaving
the villa, poor and small though it was, and taking a cheaper residence.
At this juncture a certain Captain Lee, an old friend of her late
husband--also a sea-captain, and an extremely gruff one--called upon the
widow, found out her straitened circumstances, and instantly offered her
five hundred pounds, which she politely but firmly refused.
"But madam," said the excitable captain on that memorable occasion, "I
must insist on your taking it. Excuse me, I have my own reasons,--and
they are extremely good ones,--for saying that it is my duty to give you
this sum and yours to take it. I owe it to your late husband, who more
than once laid me under obligations to him."
Mrs Tipps shook her little head and smiled.
"You are very kind, Captain Lee, to put it in that way, and I have no
doubt that my dear husband did, as you say, lay you under many
obligations because he was always kind to every one, but I cannot I
assure you--"
"Very well," interrupted the captain, wiping his bald head with his
pocket-handkerchief angrily, "then the money shall go to some charity--
some--some ridiculous asylum or hospital for teaching logarithms to the
Hottentots of the Cape, or something of that sort. I tell you, madam,"
he added with increased vehemence, seeing that Mrs Tipps still shook
her head, "I tell you that I _robbed_ your husband of five hundred
pounds!"
"Robbed him!" exclaimed Mrs Tipps, somewhat shocked. "Oh, Captain Lee,
impossible!"
"Yes I did," replied the captain, crossing his arms and nodding his head
firmly, "robbed him. I laid a bet with him to that extent and won it."
"That is not usually considered robbery, Captain Lee," said Mrs Tipps
with a smile.
"But that ought to be considered robbery," replied the captain, with a
frown. "Betting is a mean, shabby, contemptible way of obtaining money
for nothing on false pretences. The man who bets says in his heart, `I
want my friend's money without the trouble of working for it, therefore
I'll offer to bet with him. In so doing I'll risk an equal sum of my
own money. That's fair and honourable!' Is that logic?" demanded the
captain, vehemently, "It is not! In the first place it is mean to want,
not to speak of accepting, another man's money without working for it,
and it is a false pretence to say that you risk your own money because
it is _not_ your own, it is your wife's and your children's money, who
are brought to poverty, mayhap, because of your betting tendencies, and
it is your baker's and butcher's money, whose bread and meat you devour
(as long as they'll let you) without paying for it, because of your
betting tendencies, and a proportion of it belongs to your church, which
you rob, and to the poor, whom you defraud, because of your betting
tendencies; and if you say that when you win the case is altered, I
reply, yes, it is altered for the worse, because, instead of bringing
all this evil down on your own head you hurl it, not angrily, not
desperately, but, worse, with fiendish _indifference_ on the head of
your friend and his innocent family. Yes, madam, although many men do
not think it so, betting _is_ a dishonourable thing, and I'm ashamed of
having done it. I repent, Mrs Tipps, the money burns my fingers, and I
_must_ return it."
"Dear me!" exclaimed the old lady, quite unable to reply at once to such
a gush. "But Captain Lee, did you not say that it is mean to accept
money without working for it, and yet you want me to accept five hundred
pounds without working for it?"
"Oh! monstrous sophistry," cried the perplexed man, grasping desperately
the few hairs that remained on his polished head, "is there no
difference then between presenting or accepting a gift and betting? Are
there not circumstances also in which poverty is unavoidable and the
relief of it honourable as well as delightful? not to mention the
courtesies of life, wherein giving and receiving in the right spirit and
within reasonable limits, are expressive of good-will and conducive to
general harmony. Besides, I do not offer a gift. I want to repay a
debt; by rights I ought to add compound interest to it for twenty years,
which would make it a thousand pounds. Now, _do_ accept it, Mrs
Tipps," cried the captain, earnestly.
But Mrs Tipps remained obdurate, and the captain left her, vowing that
he would forthwith devote it as the nucleus of a fund to build a
collegiate institute in Cochin-China for the purpose of teaching
Icelandic to the Japanese.
Captain Lee thought better of it, however, and directed the fund to the
purchase of frequent and valuable gifts to little Joseph and his sister
Netta, who had no scruples whatever in accepting them. Afterwards, when
Joseph became a stripling, the captain, being a director in the Grand
National Trunk Railway, procured for his protege a situation on the
line.