A VISIT.
How was Holdsworth to get a living? For what was he fit? He was a
good clerk; Mr. Sherman had called him so, at least; Hanwitch was a
tolerably large place, and he ought to find no difficulty in obtaining
employment. At any rate, he must try.
One morning he put on his hat and walked into the town.
When he reached the High Street, he stopped and considered.
There was a bank; he could apply there. Then there was a brewery. If
these failed, there remained an insurance office.
These represented polite avocations.
There were shops in abundance, where men, better looking than he,
smiled over counters, and carried parcels, and stood bare-headed on
the pavement at carriage-doors. But Holdsworth was still too much the
sailor at heart to tolerate the notion of shop-serving. He would start
a little school rather than do that. And indeed school-keeping seemed
more feasible than anything else. Mrs. Parrot’s lodgings would serve
him there; boys would assemble by degrees; and he could set and hear
lessons, and teach writing and mathematics, as well as any university
man.
Meanwhile, let him try the bank.
It faced the market-place in the High Street, had a well-worn door-step
and stout, noisy swinging doors. Holdsworth entered, and found himself
in a badly-lighted office, with a counter across it, behind which were
three or four clerks. A man who looked a fourth-rate farmer was paying
money in, and whilst he counted a great accumulation of greasy silver,
which he had discharged in company with a number of soiled, infragrant
cheques out of a leather bag, he paused at every twenty to submit
an observation of a rural nature to the intelligence of an elderly
personage with long whiskers, and a somewhat Hebraical cast of visage,
behind the counter.
The manager, for so the long-whiskered man was, observing Holdsworth to
be a stranger, politely asked him his business.
“Can I speak to the manager?”
“Certainly, sir; _I_ am the manager. Walk this way, please.”
Saying which, the manager bustled importantly into a back room, and
threw open a side door for Holdsworth to enter.
“Pray be seated, sir. Nice weather.”
And the manager drew a chair to a desk, clasped his hands on a volume
of interest-tables, and fixed his eyes on Holdsworth.
“I have called to inquire if you are in want of a clerk,” said
Holdsworth.
“I beg your pardon?” exclaimed the manager.
Holdsworth repeated his remark, adding that he was in want of a
situation, and would be glad to fill any vacancy there might be in the
staff of the bank clerks.
The manager, who had expected something very different from this, got
up instantly; his business-smile vanished, he thrust his hands into his
breeches pockets, and exclaimed:
“Clerk, sir! Who told you we wanted a clerk?”
“Nobody. I have called here at my own suggestion.”
“God bless my heart! You are quite out of order, sir! Really, these
intrusions upon my time .... you should have explained your wish at the
counter. When we want a clerk, we know where to find one, backed, sir,
with first-class securities and influential recommendations.”
“Then I have made a mistake, that’s all,” said Holdsworth, surveying
the manager with great disgust; and paying no further heed to the
protests with which the other followed him to the door, he walked into
the High Street.
This summary treatment was enough to last him one day. His indignation
yielded to depression, and he returned slowly and moodily to his
lodgings.
This was the first time in his life he had ever made an application
for employment; and his reception, which was really genteel and
civil compared to the receptions experienced by men, old and young,
every day, in search of work, at the hands of employers, wounded his
sensibility and filled him with a sense of degradation.
He regained his lodgings, and endeavoured to console himself with
philosophy.
But philosophy, says Rochefoucauld, triumphs over future and past ills;
but present ills triumph over philosophy.
His sensibility did not smart the less because he reflected that
hundreds of better men than himself had been insulted by rejections as
offensive as that with which his inquiry had been encountered.
Thoughts of something tender and innocent will often quell the
stubbornest warmth. Holdsworth grew mild in a moment when his mind went
to little Nelly.
“I’ll try the brewery to-morrow,” he said to himself; “and if that
fails me, I’ll advertise for a situation; and if nothing comes of that,
I’ll start a school.”
Thus thinking he walked to the window, hoping to see his child in the
road.
Nobody was visible but the old politician with the inflamed face, who
was pacing slowly along the pavement, his hands locked behind him,
his eyes bent downwards, and his brow frowning grimly. Presently,
Holdsworth knew, the other old politician, who lived at the corner
house, would come out, and there would be much gesticulation, and
violent declamation, and frequent pauses, and moppings of the forehead
with red silk pocket-handkerchiefs. Rain had fallen in the night, and
cleansed the little gardens in front of the villas of the three weeks’
accumulation of dust that had settled upon them, and freshened up the
leaves and grass. In the bit of ground before Mrs. Parrot’s house
the flowers had withered on their stalks, but the shrubs still wore
the bright greenness of summer; the soil was dark and rich with the
grateful moisture, and breathed a fragrance of its own upon the morning
air.
Holdsworth was about to quit the window when he caught sight of Mr.
Conway coming out of his gate. He fell a step back, and watched the man
from behind the curtain. Mr. Conway advanced a few yards along his own
side of the road, and then crossed, with his eyes fixed on Holdsworth’s
window.
Was he coming to the house? He moved softly and furtively, and when he
was abreast of Mrs. Parrot’s gate, threw a glance behind him, pushed
the gate open, and knocked.
As Holdsworth did not know the man to speak to, he did not for a moment
suppose that this visit was meant for him. Much was he surprised, and
even agitated, when Mrs. Parrot came in and said that Mr. Conway was in
the passage, and would like to see him.
The first idea that rushed into Holdsworth’s head was, “I am known!”
But conjectures were out of the question, for the man was waiting.
“Pray show Mr. Conway in,” he said; and in Mr. Conway came.
Holdsworth bowed, and so did the other, with a kind of spasmodic
grace--a good bow spoiled by nervousness. He had dressed himself with
care; he was cleanly shaved; his hair was carefully brushed; his shirt
collars were white; and his boots shone.
Holdsworth had never before seen him so close. The light from the
window fell upon his face and showed the cobweb of veins in his eyes,
the puffy whiteness of his skin, the blueness of his lips, the tinge of
gleaming purple about his nostrils, and all the other signals which the
alcoholic fiend stamps upon the countenances of his votaries, so that,
let them go where they will, they may be known and loathed by honest
men as his adopted children.
But he was sober now; as sober as a man can be who has drunk but a
glass of ale since he left his bed, but whose flesh is soaked with the
abomination of the taverns, and whose brain can never be steady for the
fumes that rise incessantly into it.
“Mr. Hampden, I believe?” he exclaimed in a creamy voice, standing
near the door, which Mrs. Parrot had shut behind him, and twisting his
hat in his hands.
“Yes; pray be seated,” replied Holdsworth, looking at him steadily,
certain now that the object of this visit was not what he had imagined
it.
Mr. Conway sat down, and put his hat on the floor. His embarrassment,
when his business should come to be known, might show a possibility of
redemption, or at least satisfy us that most of the bad qualities he
was accredited with might have been absorbed into his nature with the
drink he swallowed. No thoroughly bad man could feel the nervousness
that disturbed him.
“I have called, Mr. Hampden, to thank you, for your kindness to my
little step-daughter. Indeed, sir, both my wife and myself thoroughly
appreciate your goodness. Believe us, we do.”
“Pray do not trouble to thank me. She is a sweet child, and it makes me
happy to have her,” answered Holdsworth, now at his ease, and studying
his visitor with curiosity and surprise.
“Ah! she is indeed a sweet child. A perfect treasure to her mother,
and quite a little sunbeam in my house--darkened, I regret to say, by
misfortunes beyond my control to repair.”
“I am sorry to hear that.”
“I never can sufficiently deplore having adopted so ungrateful a
vocation as dentistry. I was born to better things, Mr. Hampden. My
father had an influential position under Government; but he died in
poverty, and I was apprenticed by an uncle ... pray forgive me. These
matters cannot interest you. Privations press heavily upon a man at my
time of life. Dentistry seems to fail me; and yet, when I look around,
I find no other calling which I am qualified to espouse.”
He sighed, and pulled out a pocket-handkerchief, with which he wiped
his mouth.
Holdsworth was silent.
“Poverty I could endure, were I alone in the world,” continued Mr.
Conway; “but it is unendurable to me to witness the best of women
and the dearest of little children in want. My poor wife does not
complain; but I witness her secret sufferings in her wasting form and
irrepressible tears, and it goes to my heart, sir, to see her, and feel
my miserable incapacity to relieve her.”
“Do you mean to say that she is actually in want?” exclaimed Holdsworth
in a low voice.
“Yes, sir; we all are. As I hope to be saved, I haven’t more than two
shillings in the wide world!”
“Have you no source of income outside your profession?”
“No. I did well in the High Street; but I had many rivals and enemies,
who spread lying reports about me, and lost me my best patients. Give a
dog a bad name! I left my establishment in the heart of the town, and
came into this road because rent was cheap here; and God knows if I can
tell how I have lived since,” he cried passionately, his natural bad
temper breaking through his affectation of suffering and ill-treatment.
“The pawnbroker has been my only friend! Am I to sell the bed from
under me? Oh, sir, I think of my wife, of my poor little child--for my
child she is, if love can make her so--and the thought is death to me!”
He flourished his handkerchief and looked piteously at Holdsworth.
“How can I serve you?”
“Ah, sir!” exclaimed Mr. Conway, sinking his voice into a yet more
whining note, the while a gleam entered into his eyes; “what right
have I to trespass upon the benevolence of a stranger? of a gentleman
who has already placed me under a thousand obligations by his kindness
to my little daughter? I feel myself a wretch, sir, when I reflect
upon the unfortunate position I have placed my poor wife in. I was
flourishing in those days; I could have given--I _did_ give her and
her baby a good home. But what position is so secure that it can stand
against the lies of rivalry and jealousy? the slanderous reports of
ruffians who make capital for themselves out of a neighbour’s trifling
errors, and--and--oh! damn them!”
“How can I serve you?” said Holdsworth, coming quietly back to the
point.
“If I dare name my wants to you, sir--if I dare presume upon that
benevolence which you have so signally illustrated in your behaviour to
little Nelly, I--I----”
“I am a poor man,” said Holdsworth, as the other paused; “and can
afford but little. But that little is cheerfully at the service of your
wife and child, who must not be allowed to want.”
He spoke emphatically, to let the man understand the purpose to which
he intended his gift or loan should be applied.
“But for that wife and child, sir,” answered Mr. Conway, apparently
struggling with his emotion, “_could_ I place myself in this position?
Is there any personal necessity, however imperative, that would force
me to lose sight of the pride which renders starvation preferable to
alms-seeking, to the gentleman born? No, sir,” he continued, with an
air of injured dignity; “poor as I am, I can still recognise the claims
of my birth upon my actions; and I repeat, that were it not for my wife
and her little one, no affliction, however unsupportable, should oblige
me to intrude even upon _your_ benevolence.”
He paused, and seeing Holdsworth look impatient, exclaimed hurriedly:
“If ten pounds----” and stopped.
“You wish to borrow ten pounds?”
“Ah, sir, if I dare----”
“Of what service will so small a sum be to you?”
The man looked struck; Holdsworth had expected to hear a larger sum
named, he thought.
“Ten pounds--to a poor man--to a poor family, sir, ten pounds is a
great deal of money.”
“I will lend you ten pounds willingly, on condition that you spend it
on your wife and Nelly.”
“Certainly, certainly,” replied Mr. Conway meekly. “You may depend upon
being repaid, if I have to pawn the shirt off my back to get the money.”
I suppose that this kind of security (generally offered by men who have
not the least idea of repaying a loan) must be figurative--a poetical
figure of debt. How far would the shirt off a man’s back help the
redemption of the debts borrowed on the strength of it?
Holdsworth gave Mr. Conway two five-pound notes. The man took them
eagerly, and whilst he buried them in his trousers’ pocket, poured
forth a profusion of thanks.
“Does Mrs. Conway know of this visit?” asked Holdsworth, stopping his
noise.
“No, sir; but believe me, I shall not fail to acquaint her with your
kindness,” he answered, taking his hat and rising.
Holdsworth’s impulse was to request him not to speak to her of this
gift--for loan it would be ridiculous to call it. But he checked
himself with the consideration that, were Mr. Conway to break his word,
Dolly would find food for dangerous questioning in the request.
He said, instead, “You will not forget the purpose for which I have
lent you this money?”
“Trust me, sir; trust me,” murmured Mr. Conway, pressing his hat to his
heart. “If you will give me ink and paper I will make you out an I O U
at once.”
“Never mind that. Nelly is a growing child, and requires nourishing
food: devote the money to her and her mother, and you will make me
grateful.”
He walked into the passage, and Mr. Conway, bowing humbly, passed into
the porch, where he stood a moment or two peeping at his house; then,
with another bow, hurried into the road, and vanished in the direction
of the town.
* * * * *
The poverty of the Conways, then, was unquestionable. Holdsworth had
often speculated upon their position, but had never reached nearer
to the mark than supposing that they lived from hand to mouth, and
just made shift to support the day that was passing over them. That
they were actually in want, actually destitute indeed, it had never
entered his mind to imagine. He believed Conway’s story. And it was
very certain that, if the man had no private means of his own, he must
be hopelessly poor, for he made nothing by his profession. In all the
six weeks that Holdsworth had been in Hanwitch he had not seen as many
people call at Conway’s house; and of these, supposing them to be
patients, half of them had come away after speaking with the servant,
doubtless informed that master was out.
But even guessing so much, Holdsworth guessed only half the truth:
and it was well, perhaps, that he did not know all, for grief must
have mastered his judgment, and forced him into the confession which
he prayed, night and morning, for will to restrain. It was after dark
always when Dolly, closely veiled, would creep down the road, with
some little bundle under her shawl, for the pawnbroker, that she might
obtain a trifle in order to furnish her child with a meal on the
morrow. It was in the privacy of her own home that she laboured, as
no menial ever _will_ labour; sitting up late night after night, over
the endless task of darning and mending her own and her child’s shabby
apparel; often going supperless to bed, and waking to a day even more
hopeless than the one that had preceded it.
The devoted man, who would have given his life to win her happiness,
knew nothing of all this. Even his little child’s dress told him no
story, though a woman might have read a full and pathetic narrative
of toil and poverty in the frock, turned and re-turned, mended and
patched, and darned again and again.
Holdsworth seldom saw her now: yet, if ever she caught sight of him
at his window, she had always a kindly smile, a grateful nod: and
what with the shadow of her hat over her face, and the distance which
softened the lines of care, grief, and weariness into the sweet and
delicate effect of her beauty, he was ignorant of the serious and
withering change that had taken place in her, even during the short
time that had elapsed since they had last met and spoken in the High
Street.
Nelly came over to him at one o’clock, and he kept her to dinner. The
child was hungry, and as he watched her eating, he thought of Dolly.
“Has mamma got a good dinner to-day, darling?”
The little thing looked puzzled; but upon Holdsworth repeating the
question, answered “Noo.”
He thought she was mistaken, since, after what Conway had told him, the
man’s first action, he believed, now that he had money in his pocket,
would be to attend to his wife’s necessities. But though he repeated
his question in different shapes, the child invariably answered, “Noo,
mamma got no din-din.”
“No dinner at all! Are you sure, my pet?”
Yes, the child was sure, as sure as a child could be.
Holdsworth sprang up and rang the bell, and entered the passage
to await Mrs. Parrot. She came out of her kitchen, and Holdsworth
exclaimed, mastering his agitation:
“I want to confer with you, Mrs. Parrot. Nelly tells me that her mamma
has no dinner to-day. Is this likely--is this possible, do you think?”
“Indeed, sir, since you ask me, I do then, and God forgi’ me for
thinkin’ the worst,” answered Mrs. Parrot.
“But,” cried Holdsworth, “I gave Mr. Conway ten pounds this morning,
stipulating that he should spend it on his wife and child!”
“He!” exclaimed Mrs. Parrot, almost savagely. “The wretch! ten pounds!
he’ll spend it all i’ liquor! Oh, sir, why didn’t you give it to the
poor lady?”
“Yes--I ought to have done so,” replied Holdsworth clasping his hands.
“But how could I--what excuse _could_ I have found for sending it to
her? Oh, Mrs. Parrot! something must be done. I can’t bear to think of
the poor lady actually dinnerless. What can we contrive? Remember--she
is a lady--we must be careful.”
“To think of your lending ten pounds to that villin!” cried Mrs.
Parrot, whose mind was staggered by the munificence of the sum and the
artfulness of the man in obtaining it. “I niver heerd of such a thing!
And was that his reason for callin’? If I’d ha’ only known his object,
I’d ha’ sent him packin’ with his blarney, wouldn’t I?”
“What do you advise?” said Holdsworth, eagerly.
“Well, sir, I’m sure I don’t know what to say. She _is_ a lady, and it
wouldn’t do to send her butchers’ meat across, would it? I’ll tell you
what we _could_ do, sir; I could kill one o’ my fowls and leave it with
my compliments, pretending I had killed some yesterday, and wished her,
as a neighbour, to taste my fattening.”
“That will do! But, instead of killing your fowls, take this
half-sovereign and run at once to the poulterer’s, and buy a couple of
pullets. You can then take them across, and she will suppose they are
your own rearing. Will you do this?”
“With the greatest of pleasure, sir; and I’m sure you must have a very
kind heart to take so much interest in poor folks.”
And Mrs. Parrot ran off for her bonnet, and was presently hurrying down
the road with a market-basket on her arm, and her untied bonnet-strings
streaming over her shoulders.
Holdsworth waited impatiently for her return, whilst Nelly, who had
finished dinner, toddled about the room, gazing with round earnest
eyes into the recesses, and the cupboards, and at the shepherds on the
mantelpiece, and the yellow roses on the mat.
In ten minutes’ time Mrs. Parrot came back with her face flushed with
the heat and exercise, and darted into the house as though she had
swept half a jeweller’s shop into her basket and was flying for dear
life.
“There, sir, what do you think of these?” she exclaimed, dragging a
pair of handsomely-floured pullets out of the basket and holding them
at arm’s length, as though they were a pair of ear-rings. “Aren’t they
beauties, sir?”
“How can I send them across? Will you take them?”
“Oh yes. I can jest leave ’em at the door wi’ Mrs. Parrot’s
compliments. She’ll be sure to guess that they’re my rearin’, and save
me from an untruth, though my religion is none so fine, thank God,
that I should be afeard to tell a kind o’ white lie to help any poor
creature as wanted.”
She then examined the pullets attentively, to make sure that there were
no trade-marks upon them in the shape of tickets, adjusted her bonnet,
wiped her face, and walked across the road.
Holdsworth waited in the passage until she returned. She was absent a
few minutes, and then came back smiling, with the lid of the basket
raised to let Holdsworth see that it was empty.
“Did you see Mrs. Conway?”
“No, sir, I wouldn’t ask for her,” replied Mrs. Parrot, wiping her
feet on the door-mat. “I jest says to the gal, ‘Give this here to your
missis with my compliments, and tell her that they’re ready for cookin’
at once, as they’re been killed long enough.’ I niver see any gal look
like that wench did when she took the pullets. I thought she’d ha’
fainted. She turned as pale as pale, and then she grinned slow-like,
and then laughed wi’ a sound for all the world like the squeak of a dog
that’s smotherin’ under a cushion. Here’s your change, sir. Pullets,
six shillin’, and one is seven, and two is nine, and two sixpences
makes it right. Will you please to count it?”
Holdsworth thanked her, and returned to the sitting-room with a
relieved mind. But scarcely was he seated when Mrs. Parrot knocked on
the door, and mysteriously beckoned him into the passage.
“I forgot to say, sir, that I ast the gal before coming away if her
master was in, and she said ‘No.’ I says, ‘When will he be in?’ She
says, ‘I don’t know, missis; he went out this mornin’, an’ he’s not
been back since.’ Mark what I say, sir!” added Mrs. Parrot, raising an
emphatic forefinger, “he’ll not give a penny o’ that money to his poor
wife, but jest keep away from her till he’s drunk it all out.”
Accompanying which prophecy with many indignant nods, she walked
defiantly towards the kitchen.
The idea of Dolly’s miserable position, never before impressed upon him
as it had been that day, made Holdsworth wretched. He seated himself
at the window and stared gloomily and sadly into the road. Nelly came
to him and tried to coax him to play with her, but he had no heart
even to meet the little creature’s sweet entreating eyes with a smile.
He caught her up, pressed her to him, and kissed her again and again,
while the hot tears rolled down his thin face.
Never before was his impulse to tell Dolly who he was and snatch her
from the misery, the unmeet sorrow that encompassed her, so powerful.
Love and pity strove with the dread of dishonouring her by the
revelation. Could he endure to think that this delicate, gentle girl
was linked to a man who neglected her, who might even ill-treat her,
who at that moment might be squandering the money that had been given
him on his own gross appetites, without thought of the wife and child
wanting bread at home? What must be the issue of such a life if it were
permitted to endure? Sooner or later Holdsworth must avow himself to
save her and his child from that uttermost degree of ruin and misery to
which Conway was dragging them.
He had hoped to devote his life to them. His dream had been that
Conway’s character was not irretrievably bad, that kindly entreaty,
cordial advice, and pecuniary help might bring him to a knowledge of
his folly and set him once more on the high-road to respectability.
Such a redemption would have been Holdsworth’s sacrifice; but his own
happiness was as nothing in his eyes compared to Dolly’s. Faithfully
would he have performed his duty to her, nobly would he have vindicated
his own most honourable, most exalted devotion, could he have reclaimed
this erring man and taught him to give his wife as much happiness as
it was possible for a heart that ceaselessly mourned a dead love, to
know. Thus he could have been his Dolly’s good angel, and whilst God
permitted him, have kept watch over her and her child, dead to her
belief, but active as the holiest love could make life in his helpful
secret guardianship.
He perceived the vanity of that hope now, and yet despairingly clung
to it, because, if he surrendered it, he felt that he must confess
himself, and from this he shrank as from a deed that would inflict a
deeper degradation upon her, while Conway lived, than any she could
suffer from her husband’s behaviour.
One must either entirely sympathise with his profound susceptibility
of the obligation his supposed death had forced upon him to fulfil, or
ridicule him as a man absurdly fantastical in his views of morality.
There seems no middle standpoint to judge him from.
But unless there be too much austerity in his virtue to make it
admirable, then, to properly appreciate it, we must remember the
extraordinary tenderness of his nature, his exquisite sensibility,
which shrank from the mere thought of tarnishing the pure honour of the
woman he loved.
That he believed her honour would be tarnished were he to proclaim
himself in the lifetime of her present husband, was enough; and
whether he was right or wrong; whether he was correct in holding the
obligations of the marriage-service holy, binding, and to be disturbed
only at the risk of God’s wrath, when incurred with a spotless
conscience, when entered upon in innocence and good faith; or whether
he should have regarded the marriage-service as a mere civil convention
which made his wife his property, claimable by him on the common ground
of the law of priority, without reference to any action she might have
committed in honest belief that he was dead; one thing we must allow
him--an unparalleled quality of unselfishness, the existence of which,
while it attested the sincerity of his views (since he had his heart’s
deepest affections to lose and nothing to gain by retaining them),
elevated his conduct to the highest point of heroism.
Nelly had never before found him unwilling to romp with her; when he
raised his head she watched his face with a strange, wistful look, and
putting her finger to his cheek, said:
“Why do ’oo cry?”
He forced a smile for answer, caressed her, and then placed her on the
ground, thinking she was weary of sitting. But she climbed upon his
knee again, and repeated her question with great earnestness:
“Why do ’oo cry?”
“Because I am silly and weak, my little one. I am forgetting that there
is a good and just God over me, who will hear my prayers and help me,
as He before did, when I was alone on the wide sea.”
He said this aloud, but spoke rather to himself than to the child.
“Dod loves Nelly,” said the little thing, “and Nelly loves ’oo. Nelly
kiss ’oo.”
That was all the comfort she could give him; but it fell tenderly on
his ear. He kissed her gratefully, rocking her gently to and fro in his
arms with his eyes on her face. She soon, however, rebelled against an
attitude which crippled her limbs, and slipped on to the floor, and to
amuse her he gave her a book with pictures in it, which she examined
gravely, talking to herself as little children and aged people do.
In this manner the afternoon passed; but never was Holdsworth more
depressed, more restless, filled with more nameless anxieties and
misgivings.
Apart from all moral considerations, his future was terribly uncertain.
Suppose the Conways left the town? He must follow them, for he could
not bear the separation; and what would they think of his pursuit?
Suppose all his efforts to obtain a living failed, what should he do?
At five o’clock Mrs. Parrot came in to put on Nelly’s hat: that was
the regular hour at which the little girl was sent home by Holdsworth.
“My apron is dirty,” said the worthy woman, “so I’ll not go across with
you, my dear. But I’ll watch from the porch until I see you safe in.”
So, receiving a kiss and a piece of gingerbread from Holdsworth, the
child toddled into the road, and when she was inside the gate, where
her mother would see her, Mrs. Parrot closed the door and went back to
her ironing in the kitchen.