SINK OR SWIM?
SINK OR SWIM?
A Novel.
BY THE AUTHOR OF
“RECOMMENDED TO MERCY,”
ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18 CATHERINE ST. STRAND.
1868.
[_The right of translation and reproduction is reserved._]
LONDON:
ROBSON AND SON, GREAT NORTHERN PRINTING WORKS,
PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.
SINK OR SWIM?
CHAPTER I.
WHAT THEY SAID IN THE VILLAGE.
“If I hadn’t heard it from Mrs. Clay herself, I never would have
believed it! To think that John Beacham, who’s a sensible man as men go,
should be marrying an Irishwoman! If Honor Blake was English-born now,
one wouldn’t blame him so much; but to choose a girl that comes of
people who, as everyone knows, you can’t trust farther than you can see
them, is what I call a sin and a shame.”
The speaker was a woman of low stature, elderly, and sharp of voice and
feature. She was seated at a round old-fashioned mahogany table, on
which a teapot of the material known as Britannia metal steamed with a
pleasant warmth, while the odour of buttered toast, “hot and hot,”
filled the little room in which she and a chosen chum and gossip had
met together to talk over the domestic affairs of their friends and
neighbours.
The name and title of the first-mentioned lady was Mrs. Thwaytes, and
she, being at the present time a widow, and highly respected, kept a
small general shop in an old-fashioned village, to which I shall give
the name of Switcham. This village, situated near the grandest and most
imposing of England’s rivers, could be reached by express train in
something a little under an hour and a half from London. It was,
considering this proximity, rather a behindhand village. Progress had
not hitherto made any gigantic strides in the old-world-looking place,
where not a single house was less than a century old, and where the aged
inhabitants of the quiet spot had not as yet ceased to speak of
crinoline as an abomination, and the absence (on young women’s heads) of
that decent article called a cap as a sign and symbol of a lost and
abandoned soul.
The guest of the widow Thwaytes was qualified in many ways to be that
highly-respected personage’s confidential friend and favourite gossip. A
widow indeed she was, forlorn and desolate by her own account, but
comfortable withal in outward circumstances, and possessed of a portly
person, and a complexion indicative of good cheer and inward content.
Mrs. Tamfrey, for that was the relict’s name, had been left (like the
congenial friend above named) with an only daughter to solace her
declining years; and, after duly casting that young woman upon her own
resources as a domestic servant, she--the widow of the deceased Mr.
Tamfrey, a journeyman carpenter in a comfortable way of business--had
entered upon the attractive career of a monthly nurse. In this lucrative
profession she had met with marked and flattering success. Endowed with
a low voice, a caressing manner, and a universal fund of anecdote, as
well as considerable powers of invention, “Mrs. Tam,” as she was
habitually called, made her way very successfully among the matrons,
young and middle-aged, of the district; and over a cup of a “woman’s
best restorer, balmy tea,” the widow Tamfrey was very generally allowed
to be--during the pauses between her professional engagements--very
excellent company.
The room in which these well-suited friends had met for the purpose (not
openly avowed, but nevertheless existent) to which I before alluded was
a snug but not very spacious apartment running parallel with, and having
easy access to, the shop. Miss Thwaytes, the widow’s only daughter, and
a young person verging on forty, was occupied in the said shop--waiting
upon customers and keeping up the credit of the establishment by civil
speeches and oft-repeated remarks on the beauty of the weather and other
such _banal_ topics of conversation. A wonderfully useful person in her
way was Esther Thwaytes; a thorough woman of business, keen-eyed,
calculating, and with only the very smallest of soft spots in the
woman’s heart beating under her maidenly bosom. But there was yet
another purpose besides that of business utility to which Miss Esther
Thwaytes was daily put. With her the aged mother, who possessed but that
one ewe lamb, was always indulging in, not sweet converse, gentle
reader--not the interchange of soul with soul, nor the pleasant
fellowship of congenial trencherwomen--but the inexhaustible enjoyment,
the indescribable satisfaction of what we have heard described in five
single letters as “words.” They were both--the daughter of forty and the
parent of sixty-five--essentially “naggers.” The daily food of
_snip-snap_, the eternal picking of bones, was as necessary to them as
the air they breathed. Deprived of wholesome excitement, the lives of
these two women would have been horribly flat and uninteresting; a _vis
inertiæ_, despite the busy shop, the cheering tea-drinkings, and the
friendly intercourse with that unfailing gossip Mrs. Tamfrey, the
monthly nurse of Switcham.
That exemplary village functionary was pouring out her third _dish_ of
tea when, with a wheezy sigh, she commenced a reply to her friend’s
comment on the approaching marriage.
“As sure as I sits here, Jane Thwaytes,” she said oratorically, “if John
Beacham marries that Irish gurl he’ll come to trouble. There’s that
about Miss Blake as speaks a vollum. It isn’t that she’s, so to speak,
aither bold or forrard; I couldn’t say that of her--no, not if I was to
be put upon my Bible oath; but what I _do_ say is, that she’s got a look
with her eyes that I would have whipped _my_ daughter out of before she
was twelve years old, or I would have known the reason why.”
“It’s singular now, ain’t it,” suggested Mrs. Thwaytes, “that one can’t
learn more about who she is, and where she comes from? A nussery
governess too isn’t much to boast of neither, and I don’t wonder as the
old lady is a bit put out. The Beachams have allers held their heads
high, and John’s mother hasn’t been behindhand with ’em. She’s not the
woman, I’m thinking, to like being mother-in-law to a gurl who may, for
anything that’s known, be a gentleman’s love-child. And, pretty as she
is--I must say that for her--and like a lady too, Miss Blake had to
dress the children, and hem the pincloths, and all that sort of thing at
Clay’s Farm.”
“All that sort of thing! I should think so, and a precious deal more to
that. Why from the first moment that Mrs. Clay was took in labour--and
that’s been twice in the two years that Miss Blake’s been at the
farm--the most of the head-work fell upon Honor. There was this to be
thought of, and that to be done--the children to be kep from noise, and
the master from being put out because the baking was spoiled.
Everything, morning, noon, and night--and I used to think it was a bit
too much for such a mere girl as she is--fell upon the nussery
governess.”
“And that’s true, I believe, or the Clays, one and all, wouldn’t make so
much of her as they do; and the old lady ought to think of that, proud
as she is, for she’ll be a rare help, will Honor, at the Paddocks. A
good headpiece of her own, and not above making herself useful; and add
to that that John’s getting on for forty, and is particular in his
ways--so he is. He means honourable, does Mr. Beacham, and stands high
with rich and poor, and what’s more, he can take his wife to as good a
home as any in the country.”
“Better, maybe, for his wife if it was a poorer one,” said Mrs. Tamfrey,
who knew something of the world and of human nature. “When a young gurl
that’s been used to work marries a man that can keep her without it, ten
to one that she gets into mischief. I don’t say, if she gits a family
about her, which it’s a’most certain she will,” continued Mrs. Tam,
speaking, as was only natural, in the interests of her profession, “that
Mrs. John Beacham won’t settle down; but she’s but a giddy thing at
present, always laughing--I declare it’s the prettiest thing to hear
her, and makes one laugh, too, for company; but if she _don’t_ have a
family--and John Beacham’s nearly old enough to be her father--and if
the young men get about her, why”--and Mrs. Tam, deeming, probably, that
she had said enough to enlighten the feminine mind of her auditor, wound
up her prognostications with a very suggestive sigh.
“I hope not. It would be a sad thing, indeed, if mischief came of this
grand marriage of hers. I _should_ be sorry for John Beacham if it was
to,” mumbled the widow Thwaytes, whose mouth was fuller than was
altogether becoming of well-salted buttered toast. “I should be sorry as
sorry could be for John if trouble was to come upon him that way. Ah
well! if the Squire had only lived! Such a gentleman as he was for
advising and keeping things straight! There isn’t a day nor yet an hour
that the parish doesn’t feel the want of him. If Squire Vavasour had
been spared, things would have gone on, as we’ve all on us said a
hundred times, in quite another guess sort of fashion. There would have
been more living at the Castle then, and a precious sight more money
spent in the parish. The Castle then would have been a proper house for
young people to live in, and be married out of; and now what is it? As
Mrs. Shepherd says--and she ought to know that’s been housekeeper these
twenty years at the great house--there’s as much skinflinting there as
if milady hadn’t as many pounds as she has thousands. ‘I declare,’ says
she to me, which it will be a week to-morrow, the day I was taking tea
with her up at the Castle,--‘I declare,’ says she, ‘it’s a sin and a
shame how little’s been spent this five years at Gillingham Castle. The
Chace itself and the game and all has been let to go to rack and ruin.
Next to no labourers employed, no parties given where there used to be
a’most open house kep, and such a home made for the young gentlemen as
it’s no wonder they should run a little wild when they was let out
like.’”
“There’ll be a change now, I’m thinking,” suggested Mrs. Tamfrey after a
pause; “the young ladies are getting on, you know, and Mr. Arthur coming
of age next year will make something of a stir, in course.”
The widow shook her head with a dreary air of superior wisdom. “From
what Mrs. Shepherd tells me”--and the words were said in one of those
ominous whispers that are intended to imply even more of knowledge than
is expressed--“from what Mrs. Shepherd says, there’s no coming of age
yet awhile for the air aperient of Gillingham. There’s something out of
the common, it appears, though what it is Mrs. Shepherd couldn’t speak
to exactly, in the last entail. Anyway, milady--which seems odd, don’t
it? she having been the heiress--hasn’t got, after a certain day--that’s
pos--anything to do with the estate and property. It’s that, folks
say--them as knows something about the matter--as puts her out so. And
it’s to be, some says, when Mr. Arthur is five-and-twenty that his mamma
will have to walk out of her own house like a private person, after all
the money and land that she was born to.”
“Let milady alone,” put in Mrs. Tam decidedly; “she’ll be rich enough,
if all’s true, whatever happens. There’s a pretty long purse a-filling
somewhere, I’ll be bound. It’s little besides her name that she gives to
all them mad-houses and county ’ospittles that there’s such a talk
about. No, no; Milady Millicent isn’t one to be short of cash, whoever
else goes to the wall--but,” interrupting herself, “my gracious! Jane
Thwaytes, if there ain’t two parties a-waiting in the shop, and no one
in life to serve them but Esther!”
Startled by this appeal to her love of gain and order, the widow, after
a hurried wipe of her lips with the corner of her apron, bustled into
the adjoining shop with a sharp rebuke already on her tongue. It was a
tidy and very prosperous establishment that of which Esther Thwaytes was
the prop and mainstay. In it you could obtain all that the heart of a
reasonable woman of simple tastes and habits ought to desire. On one
side, the counter was strewed with cheap ribbons, snowy cap-fronts,
artificial flowers more gaudy than artistic, with occasionally a
tempting novelty in the shape of the last new thing in bonnets. The
other side of the widow’s flourishing “store” contained goods that were
more useful than ornamental. Tea, coffee, tobacco, and snuff, together
with other articles of home and colonial produce, were procurable at
“the” shop in the main street of Switcham. As a matter of course, the
widow, enjoying the benefit of a monopoly, drove a thriving trade; and,
equally as a matter of course, incessant were her jeremiads on the
disjointedness of the times, the dearness of provisions, the iniquity of
subordinates, and the general decadence of all things since the days
which she was pleased to call “her time.” And yet, at scarcely any hour
of the day from the early hour of opening was the little shop devoid of
customers; while towards the witching time of evening, and that more
especially on a Saturday night (for the widow was no advocate for early
closing), her house was one, it may be said, of “call”--a regular
rendezvous for the busy and the idle, for the sweethearts and the
gossips, of the village where the much-respected widow had been born and
bred.