THE OLD OAK CUPBOARD
THE year was passing on; day after day, week after week, month after
month, following each other in quick succession, and Marjorie was
keeping a private calendar of her own, and counting the days that must
still pass before Christmas came, when she was to go home for her first
holiday.
Daisy Bank did not alter much with the changing seasons: there was
very little to mark the progression of spring, summer, and autumn.
Barely a tree was in sight, and the few that were to be found were so
stunted, blighted, and covered with smoke that the spring freshness of
their leaves lasted but a few days. Upon the mounds grew a few coarse
daisies—at least, the children called them daisies; they were a kind
of feverfew with a daisy-like flower. Nothing else would grow there,
which is perhaps why the place got its name, a name which had at first
appeared to Marjorie to be utterly unsuitable.
During all the summer months and throughout the early autumn, her life
had been most uneventful and monotonous. There was the daily routine of
household duties, "the common round, the daily task," but nothing more.
No one else came to see her, and from that day in June, when he had
stepped into the Birmingham train, she had seen and heard nothing more
of Captain Fortescue. She always thought of him by his old name, even
though she knew that he had dropped the title.
The arrival of the home letters was the great event of Marjorie's week,
and she read and re-read them until she almost knew them by heart.
They made her home-sick at times, but she fought bravely against the
feeling, and looked on hopefully to Christmas.
All this time, old Mrs. Hotchkiss had been growing more and more
feeble, and as autumn advanced, she was quite unable to leave her
bed. A rough girl of sixteen, who lived next door, waited upon her,
and she seemed to have plenty of money to pay her, and she was never
behind-hand in her rent. How she lived, Enoch did not know; he told
Marjorie that she used to be very badly off, and that he had often
seen her scraping up the cinders on the ash-heaps, but he fancied that
now Carrie must be sending her money, as she seemed to have sufficient
for all she wanted. Marjorie often took her soup, and milk puddings,
which Mrs. Holtby was pleased that she should make for her, and she was
always grateful for these. She much enjoyed hearing Marjorie read, and
a feeble glimmer of light seemed to have penetrated to her poor dark
soul.
But one day, late in October, when Marjorie went to see her, she found
the old woman crying and evidently in great trouble.
"What is it, Mother Hotchkiss?"
"The doctor has been," she said, "and he says as how I won't be long
now. I heard him tell Anna Maria when she let him out."
"Well, don't cry," said Marjorie; "you know what I told you when I was
here last."
"Yes, I think of it all the time."
"And have you said that little prayer?"
"Yes, I have;
"'O Lord, forgive me my sins, for Jesus Christ's sake.'
"I've said it scores of times; but I don't believe He will forgive me,
all the same."
"Why not?"
"Oh! Because—because! But I mustn't tell you. You see, I promised not
to tell; but He'll never forgive me, I know He won't."
"But He says He will. 'If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just
to forgive us our sins.'"
"Yes, that's just it; that's just what I mean, my dear. If we confess
our sins; but I haven't confessed my sin. See?"
"But, dear Mother Hotchkiss, you must confess it," said Marjorie.
"But I can't—I can't—you don't understand, my dear. It's something as I
can't confess."
Marjorie talked to her for some time longer, and the old woman cried
very much, and said again and again that she wanted to tell her, but
she couldn't, no, she couldn't. At last Marjorie was obliged to leave
her; she felt very sorry for her, and when she knelt to pray before
getting into bed, she prayed very earnestly for the poor ignorant old
woman who was so fast passing away, that she might find comfort and
peace before the end came.
Marjorie was tired that night, and soon fell asleep. She was dreaming
that she was in Borrowdale, sitting on a stone by the river, when
suddenly a pebble hit the rock on which she was perched, and she looked
up to see Louis's merry face on the bank above her. Then another pebble
came, and she woke. No, she was not in Borrowdale, but in her little
bedroom in Daisy Bank. What was that noise, then? Some one was throwing
pebbles at her window! She was very much startled, but got out of bed
and looked out. It was quite dark, and she could see no one. She opened
her window a little way and said, "Who is there?"
"It's me, Miss," said old Enoch's voice. "Poor Mother Hotchkiss is much
worse, and she wouldn't give us any peace till we said we would fetch
you. She says she must see you, and she can't die happy till she has."
"Who is with her, Enoch?"
"Peggy Jones, that's Anna Maria's mother; but I've been there the last
hour. They fetched me. See?"
"I'll come, Enoch."
"I'll wait for you, Miss, and take you across," he said.
Marjorie dressed quickly, and knocking at Mr. and Mrs. Holtby's door,
she explained where she was going and why. Mr. Holtby got up and let
her out, and then, guided through the darkness by old Enoch, she made
her way to the curious old house.
Marjorie found Mrs. Hotchkiss far more ill than when she had left her
that afternoon, but she raised herself in bed when Marjorie went in,
and taking her hand, she held it between both her own.
"That's right, dear!" she whispered. "I've been just longing for you to
come. Send them out, and I'll tell you."
"I think she has something she wants to say to me," said Marjorie to
Enoch and Peggie Jones, who were standing by the window; "if you would
like to rest for a little, I will take care of her."
"Don't you mind being left, Miss?" said Peggy.
"Oh no, not at all; and I will call you if she is worse."
"Rap on that wall," said Peggy; "my bed is just on the other side of
it, and I'll be with you in a moment. Our house joins this, you know."
They left the room together and went down the steep stairs, and
presently Marjorie heard them closing the outer door, and she knew that
she was alone in the house with the dying woman.
"Are they gone, my dear?" she asked.
"Yes, they are gone," said Marjorie.
"Are we quite alone?"
"Yes, quite alone."
"You know what you said about confessing?"
"Yes! 'If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us
our sins.'"
"I want to ask you something, dearie. Stoop your head down to me; I
want to whisper. If you was to make a promise to somebody, and if it
was a wicked promise that you had no business to have made, ought you
to keep it?"
"Certainly not," said Marjorie. "It would be wrong to make a wicked
promise, and it would also be wrong to keep it when you had made it."
"Do you think so, my dear? Are you sure?"
"Quite sure."
"Then listen, dearie, and I'll tell you. I feel as if I can't die till
I do. I feel as if I must tell somebody. See? You know who Carrie is?"
"Yes; your daughter."
"Ay, and I wasn't half proud of her; a clever girl too, and such
a scholar! Well, Carrie married a man as she met up in the North
somewhere; and he was well-to-do and all that. I believe they had a
very comfortable home, but he was awful mean to Carrie. He never would
let her send anything to her poor old mother. I was nigh starved, my
dear, I was indeed. If I hadn't raked in the ash-heaps, there's many a
day I wouldn't have had a fire. I only had parish pay, see? And not too
much of that. But one day they came to see me."
"Who did?"
"Her and her husband. And he spoke very fair, and he said if I would do
a little thing for him, he'd allow me ten shillings a week as long as
I lived. Well, my dear, I said I would do it, if I could. He wouldn't
tell me what it was till I had promised I wouldn't tell anybody. And
then he went to his hand-bag, and he brought out a tin box. It was just
a common sort of box, like a small biscuit-box, and it had a bit of
string tied tight round it.
"'Now, mother,' he says, 'I want you to hide this 'ere box in one of
them little cupboards in the chimney corner till I send for it. I'm
a-going to Ameriky,' he says, 'and when we're settled there and have
got a home of our own, I'll write you word where to send it.'
"'Can't you take it with you?' I says. 'It isn't big, and it won't take
much room in your boxes.'
"'No,' he says; 'I'd rather you sent it, mother, and I'll let you have
the address. Old Enoch will direct it for you. You can tell him it's
something as Carrie left behind her.'
"Well, my dear, it seemed a stroke of good luck for me, didn't it now?
And then he said they must go; but Carrie begged and prayed him to let
her stay just one night with me, as she was going so far away, and
might never see her old mother again."
"And did he let her?"
"He wouldn't at first; but Carrie cried, my dear. And at last he gave
in, and said she was to follow him the next day. Well, we went to bed,
Carrie and me, dearie, and when she was lying beside me that night, I
told her I did not much like having charge of that tin box, because
folks might rob an old woman like me. And I asked her did she think it
was jewels, or what was it?"
"What did she say?"
"She said it was naught but paper—some letters, she said—and then she
began to cry. So I asked her what was the matter, dear. And she said
she didn't like it at all; but they wouldn't listen to what she said."
"Who wouldn't?"
"Him and his sister. They'd stole this 'ere letter from some one as his
sister lived with. She stole it, I believe, and then he took it and
raised money on it."
"How could he do that?"
"I don't know, my dear. I can't understand these things. She called
it 'hush money,' or some such name. There was somebody as didn't want
what was in that letter to be known. And Josiah—that's my daughter's
husband, dearie—kept on threatening him that he would tell, and then
making him pay money to get him to hold his tongue. Carrie said that
some day Josiah would sell this man the letter, and get hundreds of
pounds for it; but he wanted first to see how much he could get out of
him by threatening him, without parting with the letter."
"I wonder what it was about," said Marjorie.
"I don't know, my dear. Carrie didn't know; he wouldn't let her read
it. And I've never opened the box, and I couldn't read it if I did."
"Then your daughter did not like what her husband was doing?"
"No; she was frightened, my dear. Mr. Forty Screws was in a great way
about losing the letter. See? And Josiah was afraid he would put the
'tectives on them, so that's why they was going out of the country. His
sister was going with them, his half-sister she was; she was the one
that stole it from Mr. Forty Screws, and they didn't want to take the
letter with them, lest the 'tectives should search them, and find it in
their boxes. When once they got over to Ameriky they thought they was
safe. See? Carrie did cry about it, though, my dear, and she said if
she had her way she would give it back to Mr. Forty Screws, and have
done with it all."
"What a curious name! Are you sure that it was Forty Screws?"
"Well, something like it, my dear."
"Where is the box?"
"In the cupboard below; one of those little cupboards by the fire."
"Then they never sent for it?"
"Never, dearie, and I haven't heard a word from them since; it's more
than six months now since they sailed. There was a ship went down in
them parts soon after they went; at least Enoch told me so. He saw it
in the papers; and sometimes I think they all went down in it. I'm sure
Carrie would have written if she'd been alive. Now I've told you, my
dear. Have I done right, do you think?"
"Quite right, Mother Hotchkiss, and I think you ought to do more; you
ought to send that letter back to the man from whom it was stolen."
"I don't know where he lives nor nothing about him, my dear; and then
it seems mean, after taking Josiah's money, to go and tell of him."
"How can Josiah be drowned if he still sends you the money?"
"He doesn't send it now, my dear. He left enough to last for a year
with Tom Noakes at the public there, and he pays it to me reg'lar, Tom
does. Then Josiah said that he would send more when the year was up.
See?"
"That letter ought certainly to go back to the man to whom it belongs,"
said Marjorie, "I am sure of that."
"But how can I tell who it is?"
"May I look at the letter? Perhaps his address is on it."
"Yes, my dear, you may if you like. Will you go and get it?"
Marjorie took the candle and went down the rickety stairs. A cold wind
blew up from the vault-like dairy as she passed the flight of stone
steps leading down to it. She felt almost like a thief herself, as she
crossed the kitchen and made her way to the ancient fireplace. There
was the old oak cupboard, the door of which had often attracted her
attention by its quaint appearance.
The small cupboard was locked, but the key was in it. She turned it in
the lock, and the carved door flew open. She hunted amongst the rubbish
with which it was filled, but she found no box. Odds and ends of all
descriptions were there, but nowhere could she discover the one thing
she had come to seek.
Perhaps the letter was in the other cupboard. There was no key in that;
but she found that she could open it with the key she had found in the
first one. She unlocked it; and at first she thought that this second
cupboard was empty; she could see nothing whatever in it.
However, as she felt along the shelf, she discovered in one corner of
it, tightly jammed into the wall, and well out of sight, a small tin
box. It took her some minutes to get it out, and then, by the light of
her candle, she looked at it. It was tied up tightly with string, and
the string was sealed in several places. She carried it upstairs and
put it in the old woman's hands.
"Is that it?" she said.
"Yes, my dear, that's it. Will you open it?"
"I hardly like to do it," said Marjorie, "and yet—Did you say the name
was Forty Screws? Do you think it possible, Mother Hotchkiss, that it
could have been Fortescue?"
"Very likely, my dear; I never can remember names, only I thought of
the screws in a box my old man used to keep 'em in. They're there yet,
dear. And then I thought of forty of them. See? And I remembered it
that way. But maybe I didn't hear her quite right, my dear."
Again Marjorie hesitated. But if it should be—if it was possible that
it could be something that he had lost and that he wanted—something
that he would be glad to have once more in his hands. Yes, she would
open it; it could not be wrong—it surely could not be wrong.
She broke the seals and unfastened the string. Then it was easy to take
off the lid of the box. Inside was a sheet of foolscap paper, closely
covered with writing.
She glanced at the beginning, "My dear Ken."
She looked at the end, "Your loving Father, Joseph Fortescue."
Yes, it was the same! Even the handwriting was familiar to her; she
had often seen it before when old Mr. Fortescue had written with the
cheques which he sent to her mother.
Hastily she put the letter back in the box, closed the lid, and tied
the string tightly round it; not a word of it should be seen by any
one. She was trembling with agitation as she did so, and the old woman
noticed it.
"You know him, my dear?"
"Yes, I know him," she said; but her teeth chattered as she spoke.
"You're cold, my dear."
"No, not cold, only so glad."
"Has he wanted it, my dear?"
"I expect so; he hasn't told me, but it may be everything to him just
now, if it's good news. I hope it is."
"Will you take it to him, dear?"
"Shall I?"
"Yes, do, dear; don't tell anybody else, will you?"
"No, I won't; no one else shall know."
"Promise you'll take it to him yourself!"
"I promise."
"Now, my dear, I can say my prayer. I think He'll forgive me now."
"Yes," said Marjorie, as her tears fell fast, "dear Mother Hotchkiss,
I know He will. 'If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to
forgive us our sins.' He is faithful, because He has promised to
forgive us, and so you see, He can't say no when we ask Him; and He is
just, because the Lord Jesus has been punished instead of us, and so
God cannot punish us too for the same sins. Do you see?"
"Yes, my dear, thank you; I shall die happy now."
Soon after this, steps were heard on the stairs, and the old woman
signalled to her to hide the box, and Marjorie slipped it under her
coat just as Peggy Jones came into the room.
"You'll let me come now, Miss," she said. "You must be so tired. You
ought to go home and get a bit of sleep."
Marjorie stooped down and kissed the poor old face lying on the pillow,
and then she crept downstairs and went out into the darkness. But she
did not mind even that to-night; she felt as if she cared for nothing,
so long as the box was safe. When she got to the house the door had
been left on the latch, so she let herself in and crept up to bed,
carrying the precious box with her.