Jenny, I've had pretty well enough of you; you can go to the devil
your own way. So no more at present from your sincere well-wisher
TOM.
'P.S.--I'm going for a soldier.'
And I left everything: my master that I was bound to, and my trade
and my father. And I went straight off to London. And I should have
been a soldier right enough but that I fell in with a fireman, and
he persuaded me to go in for that business, which is just as
exciting as a soldier's, and a great deal more dangerous, most
times. And a fireman I was for six or eight years, but I never cared
to walk out with another girl when I thought of Jenny. I didn't tell
my folks where I'd gone, and for years I heard nothing from them.
And one night there was a fire in a street off the Borough--a high
house it was,--and I went up the ladder to a window where there was
a woman screaming, and directly I see her face I see it was Jenny.
I fetched her down the ladder right enough, and she clung round my
neck (she didn't know me from Adam), and said: 'Oh, go back and
fetch my husband.' And I knew it was Wheeler I'd got to go and find.
Then I went back and I looked for Wheeler.
There he was, lying on the bed, drunk.
Then the devil says to me, 'What call have you to go and find him,
the drunken swine? Leave him be, and you can marry Jenny, and let
bygones be bygones'; and I stood there half a minute, quite still,
with the smoke getting thick round me. Then, the next thing I knew,
there was a cracking under my feet and the boards giving way, and I
sprang across to Wheeler all in a minute, as anxious to save him as
if he'd been my own twin brother. There was no waking him, it was
lift him or leave him, and somehow or other I got him out; but that
minute I'd given to listening to Satan had very nearly chucked us
both to our death, and we only just come off by the skin of our
teeth. The crowd cheered like mad when I dragged him out.
I was burned awfully bad, and such good looks as I'd had burnt off
me, and I didn't know nothing plainly for many a long day.
And when I come to myself I was in a hospital, and there was a
sweet-faced charity sister sitting looking at me, and, by the Lord,
if it wasn't Amelia! And she fell on her knees beside me, and she
says, 'Tom, I must tell you.
Ever since I found religion I've known what a wicked girl I was. O
Tom, to see you lying there, so ill! O Tom, forgive me, or I shall
go mad, I know I shall!'
And, with that, she told me straight out, holding nothing back, that
what she'd said to me that night eight years ago was a lie, no
better; and that who I'd seen in the church porch with young Wheeler
was not Jenny at all, but Amelia herself, dressed in Jenny's things.
'Oh, forgive me, Tom!' says Amelia, the tears runnin' over her nun's
dress. 'Forgive me, Tom, for I can never forgive myself! I knew
Jenny didn't rightly care about you, Tom, and I loved you so dear.
And Wheeler wanted Jenny, and so I was tempted to play off that
trick on you; I thought you would come round to me after.'
I was weak still with my illness, but I put my hand on hers, and I
says, 'I do forgive you, Amelia, for, after all, you done it for
love of me. And are you a nun, my dear?' says I.
'No,' says she, 'I'm only on liking as it were; if I don't like them
or they don't like me, I can leave any minute.'
'Then leave, for God's sake,' says I, 'if you've got a bit of love
for me left. Let bygones be bygones, and marry me as soon as I come
out of this, for it's worth something to be loved as you've loved
me, Amelia, and I was always fond of you.'
'What?' says she. 'Me marry you, and be happy after all the harm
I've done? You run away from your articles and turned fireman, and
Jenny married to a drunken brute--no, Tom, no! I don't deserve to be
happy; but, if you forgive me, I shan't be as miserable as I was.'
'Well,' says I, 'if ever you think better of it let me know.'
And the curious thing is that, within two years, she did think
better of it--for why? That fire had sobered Wheeler more than
twenty thousand temperance tracts, and all the Sons of the Phoenix
and Bands of Hope rolled into one. He never touched a drop of drink
since that day, and Jenny's as happy as her kind ever is. I hear she
didn't fret over me more than a month, though perhaps that's only
what I deserved, writing to her as I did. And then Amelia she
said--'No such harm done then after all.' So she married me.
Now, you see, if I'd listened to Satan and hadn't pulled Wheeler
out, I shouldn't have got burned, and I shouldn't have got into the
hospital, and I shouldn't have found Amelia again, and then where
should I have been? Whereas now, we're farming the same bit of land
that my father farmed before us. And if this was a made-up story,
Amelia would have had to drowned herself or something, and I should
have gone a-weeping and a-wailing for Jenny all my born days; but as
it's true and really happened, Amelia and me have been punished
enough, I think; for eight years of unhappiness is only a few words
of print in a story-book, but when you've got to live them, every
day of them, eight years is eight years, as Amelia and I shall
remember till our dying day; and eight years unhappiness is enough
punishment for most of the wrong things a man can do, or a woman
either for that matter.