carried on by a widow, one Mrs. Bates. Rymer took to going in there
of an evening when he had the time, and sitting in the parlour behind
with Mrs. Bates and her two daughters. Failing money for theatres and
concerts, knowing no friends to drop in to, young fellows drift anywhere
for relaxation when work is done. Mrs. Bates, a good old motherly soul,
as fat as her best pig, bade him run in whenever he felt inclined. Rymer
liked her for her hearty kindness, and liked uncommonly the dish of hot
sausages, or chops, that would come on the table for supper. The worst
was, he grew to like something else--and that was Miss Susannah.
If it's true that people are attracted by their contrasts, there might
have been some excuse for Rymer. He was quiet and sensitive, with a
refined mind and person, and retiring manners. Susannah Bates was free,
loud, good-humoured, and vulgar. Some people, it was said, called her
handsome then; but, judging by what she was later, we thought it must
have been a very broad style of beauty. The Miss Bateses were intended
by their mother to be useful; but they preferred being stylish. They
played "Buy a broom" and other fashionable tunes on the piano, spent
time over their abundant hair, wore silks for best, carried a fan to
chapel on Sundays, and could not be persuaded to serve in the shop on
the busiest day. Good Mrs. Bates managed the shop herself with the help
of her foreman: a steady young man, whose lodgings were up a court hard
by.
Well, Tom Rymer, the poor clergyman's son, grew to be as intimate there
as if it were his home, and he and Susannah struck up a friendship that
continued all the years he was at the next door. Just before he was out
of his time, Mrs. Bates died.
The young foreman somehow contrived to secure the business for himself,
and married the elder Miss Bates off-hand. There ensued some frightful
squabbling between the sisters. The portion of money said to be due to
Miss Susannah was handed over to her with a request that she should find
herself another home. Rymer came of age just then, and the first thing
he did was to give her a home himself by making her his wife.
There was the blight. His prospects were over from that day. The little
money she had was soon spent: he must provide a living how he could.
Instead of qualifying himself for a surgeon, he took a situation as a
chemist and druggist's assistant: and, later, set up for himself in the
shop at Timberdale. For the first ten years of his married life, he was
always intending to pass the necessary examinations: each year saying it
should be done the next. But expenses came on thick and fast; and that
great need with every one, present wants, had to be supplied first. He
gave up the hope then: went on in the old jog-trot line, and subsided
into an obscure rural chemist and druggist.
The son, Benjamin, was intended for a surgeon. As a preliminary, he was
bound apprentice to his father in order to learn the mysteries of drugs
and chemicals. When out of his time, he was transferred to a chemist and
druggist's at Tewkesbury, who was also in practice as a medical man.
There, Mr. Benjamin fell in with bad companions; a lapse that, in course
of time, resulted in his coming home, changing the note in our letter
for the stolen one, and then decamping from Timberdale. What with the
blow the discovery itself was to Rymer, and what with the concealing of
the weighty secret--for he had to conceal it: he could not go and inform
against his own son--it pretty nearly did for him. Rymer tried to make
reparation in one sense of the word--by the bringing of that five-pound
bank-note to the Squire. For which the Squire, ignorant of the truth,
thought him a downright lunatic.
For some months, after that evening, Thomas Rymer was to be seen in
his shop as usual, growing to look more and more like a ghost. Which
Darbyshire, the Timberdale doctor, said was owing to liver, and
physicked him well.
But the physic did not answer. Of all obstinate livers, as Darbyshire
said, Rymer's was about the worst he had ever had to do with. Some days
he could not go into the shop at all, and Margaret, his daughter, had to
serve the customers. She could make up prescriptions just as well as he,
and people grew to trust her. They had a good business. It was known
that Rymer's drugs were genuine; had direct from the fountain-head. He
had given up the post-office, and the grocer opposite had taken to
it--Salmon, who was brother to Salmon of South Crabb. In this uncertain
way, a week ill, and a week tolerably well, Rymer continued to go on for
about two years.
* * * * *
Margaret Rymer stood behind the counter: a neat little girl in grey
merino. Her face was just like her father's; the same delicate features,
the sweet brown eyes, and the look of innate refinement. Margaret
belonged to his side of the house; there was not an atom of the
Brummagem Bateses in her. The Squire, who remembered her grandfather
the clergyman, said Margaret took after him. She was in her nineteenth
year now, and for steadiness you might have trusted her alone right
across the world and back again.
She stood behind the counter, making up some medicine. A woman in a
coarse brown cloak with a showy cotton handkerchief tied on her head was
waiting for it. It had been a dull autumn day: evening was coming on,
and the air felt chilly.
"How much be it, please, miss?" asked the woman, as Margaret handed her
the bottle of mixture, done up in white paper.
"Eighteenpence. Thank you."
"Be the master better?" the woman turned round from the door to inquire,
as if the state of Mr. Rymer's health had been an afterthought.
"I think he is a little. He has a very bad cold, and is lying in bed
to-day. Thank you for asking. Good-night."
When dusk came on, Margaret shut the street-door and went into the
parlour. Mrs. Rymer sat there writing a letter. Margaret just glanced
in.
"Mother, can you listen to the shop, please?"
"I can if I choose--what should hinder me?" responded Mrs. Rymer. "Where
are you off to, Margaret?"
"To sit with my father for a few minutes."
"You needn't bother to leave the shop for that. I dare say he's asleep."
"I won't stay long," said Margaret. "Call me, please, if any one comes
in."
She escaped up the staircase, which stood in the nook between the shop
and the parlour. Thomas Rymer lay back in the easy-chair by his bit of
bedroom fire. He looked as ill as a man could look, his face thin and
sallow, the fine nose pinched, the mild brown eyes mournful.
"Papa, I did not know you were getting up," said Margaret, in a soft low
tone.
"Didn't you hear me, child?" was his reply, for the room was over the
shop. "I have been long enough about it."
"I thought it was my mother moving about."
"She has not been here all the afternoon. What is she doing?"
"I think she is writing a letter."
Mr. Rymer groaned--which might have been caused by the pain that he
was always feeling. Mrs. Rymer's letters were few and far between, and
written to one correspondent only--her son Benjamin. That Benjamin was
random and must be getting a living in any chance way, or not getting
one at all, and that he had never been at home for between two and
three years, Margaret knew quite well. But she knew no worse. The
secret hidden between Mr. and Mrs. Rymer, that they never spoke of to
each other, had been kept from her.
"I wish you had not got up," said Margaret. "You are not well enough to
come down to-night."
He looked at her, rather quickly; and spoke after a pause.
"If I don't make an effort--as Darbyshire tells me--it may end in my
becoming a confirmed invalid, child. I must get down while I can."
"You will get better soon, papa; Mr. Darbyshire says so," she answered,
quietly swallowing down a sigh.
"Ay, I know he does. I hope it will be so, please God. My life has been
only a trouble throughout, Margaret; but I should like to struggle with
it yet for all your sakes."
Looking at him as he sat there, the firelight playing upon his worn face
with its subdued spirit, you might have seen it was true--that his life
had been a continuous trouble. Was he born to it? or did it only come
upon him through marrying Susannah Bates? On the surface of things, lots
seemed very unequally dealt out in this world. What had been the lot of
Thomas Rymer? The poor son of a poor curate, he had known little but
privation in his earlier years; then came the long drudgery of his
apprenticeship, then his marriage, and the longer drudgery of his
after-life. An uncongenial and unsuitable marriage--and he had felt it
to the backbone. From twenty to thirty years had Rymer toiled in a shop
late and early; never taking a day's rest or a day's holiday, for some
one must always be on duty, and he had no help or substitute. Even on
Sundays he must be at hand, lest his neighbours should be taken ill
and want drugs. If he went to church, there was no certainty that his
servant-maid--generally a stout young woman in her teens, with a black
face and rough hair--would not astonish the congregation by flying up
to his pew-door to call him out. Indeed the vision was not so very
uncommon. Where, then, could have been Rymer's pleasure in life? He
had none; it was all work. And upon the work came the trouble.
Just as the daughter, Margaret, was like her father, so the son,
Benjamin, resembled his mother. But for the difference of years, and
that his red hair was short and hers long, he might have put on a lace
cap, and sat for her portrait. He was the eldest of the children;
Margaret the youngest, those between had died. Seven years between
children makes a difference, and Margaret with her gentleness had always
been afraid of rough Benjamin.
But whether a child is ugly or handsome, it's all the same to the
parents, and for some years the only white spot in Thomas Rymer's life
had been the love of his little Benjamin. For the matter of that, as a
child, Ben was rather pretty. He grew up and turned out wild; and it
was just as great a blow as could have fallen upon Rymer. But when that
horrible thing was brought home to him--taking the bank-note out of the
letter, and substituting the stolen one for it--then Rymer's heart gave
in. Ever since that time it had been as good as breaking.
Well, that was Thomas Rymer's lot in life. Some people seem, on the
contrary, to have nothing but sunshine. Do you know what Mrs. Todhetley
says?--that the greater the cloud here, the brighter will be the
recompense hereafter. Looking at Thomas Rymer's face as the fire played
on it--its goodness of expression, almost that of a martyr; remembering
his prolonged battle with the world's cares, and his aching heart;
knowing how inoffensive he had been towards his fellow-creatures, ever
doing them a good turn when it lay in his power, and never an ill
one--one could only hope that his recompense would be of the largest.
"Had many people in this afternoon, Margaret?"
"Pretty well, papa."
Mr. Rymer sighed. "When I get stronger----"
"Margaret! Shop."
The loud coarse summons was Mrs. Rymer's. Margaret's spirit recoiled
from it the least in the world. In spite of her having been brought up
to the "shop," there had always been something in her innate refinement
that rebelled against it and against having to serve in it.
"A haperth o' liquorish" was the extensive order from a small child,
whose head did not come much above the counter. Margaret served it
at once: the liquorice, being often in demand, was kept done up in
readiness. The child laid down the halfpenny and went out with a bang.
"I may as well run over with the letter," thought Margaret--alluding to
an order she had written to London for some drug they were out of. "And
there's my mother's. Mother," she added, going to the parlour-door, "do
you want your letter posted?"
"I'll post it myself when I do," replied Mrs. Rymer. "Ain't it almost
time you had the gas lighted? That shop must be in darkness."
It was so, nearly. But the gas was never lighted until really needed, in
the interests of economy. Margaret ran across the road, put her letter
into the post in Salmon's window, and ran back again. She stood for
a moment at the door, looking at a huge lumbering caravan that was
passing--a ménage on wheels, as seen by the light within its small
windows. "It must be on its way to Worcester fair," she thought.
"Is it you, Margaret? How d'ye do?"
Some great rough man had come up, and was attempting to kiss her.
Margaret started back with a cry. She would have closed the door against
him; but he was the stronger and got in.
"Why, what possesses the child! Don't you know me?"
Every pulse in Margaret Rymer's body tingled to pain as she recognized
him. It was her brother Benjamin. Better, than this, that it had been
what she fancied--some rude stranger, who in another moment would have
passed on and been gone for ever. Benjamin's coming was always the
signal for discomfort at home, and Margaret felt half-paralyzed with
dismay.
"How are the old folk, Maggie?"
"Papa is very ill," she answered, her voice slightly trembling. "My
mother is well as usual. I think she was writing to you this afternoon."
"Governor ill! So I've heard. Upstairs a good deal, is he not?"
"Quite half his time, I think."
"Who attends here?"
"I do."
"You!--you little mite! Brought your knowledge of rhubarb to good use,
eh? What's the matter with papa?"
"He has not been well for a long while. I don't know what it is. Mr.
Darbyshire says"--she dropped her voice a little--"that he is sure
there's something on his mind."
"Poor old dad!--just like him! If a woman came in with a broken arm,
he'd take it to heart."
"Benjamin, I think it is _you_ that he has most at heart," the girl took
courage to say.
Mr. Benjamin laughed. "Me! He needn't trouble about me. I am as steady
as old Time, Maggie. I've come home to stay; and I'll prove to him that
I am."
"Come home to stay!" faltered Margaret.
"I can take care of things here. I am better able to do it than you."
"My father will not put me out of my place here," said Margaret,
steadily. "He has confidence in me; he knows I do things just as he
does."
"And for that reason he makes you his substitute! Don't assume, Miss
Maggie; you'd be more in your place stitching wristbands in the parlour
than as the presiding genius in a drug-shop. How d'ye do, mother?"
The sound of his voice had reached Mrs. Rymer. She did not believe her
own ears, and came stealing forth to look, afraid of what she might see.
To give Madam Rymer her due, she was quite as honest-natured as her
husband; and the matter of the bank-note, the wrong use made of the keys
she was foolish enough to lend surreptitiously to Mr. Benjamin, had
brought her no light shock at the time. Ill-conduct in the shape of
billiards, and beer, and idleness, she had found plenty of excuse for in
her son; but when it came to felony, it was another thing altogether.
"It _is_ him!" she muttered, as he saw her, and turned. "Where on earth
have you sprung from?" demanded Mrs. Rymer.
"Not from the skies, mother. Hearing the governor was on the sick list,
I thought I ought to come over and see him."
"None of your lies, Ben," said Mrs. Rymer. "_That_ has not brought you
here. You are in some disgraceful mess again."
"It _has_ brought me here--and nothing else," said Ben: and he spoke
truth. "Ashton of Timberdale----"
A faint groan--a crash as of breaking glass. When they turned to look,
there was Rymer, fallen against the counter in his shock of surprise and
weakness. His arm had thrown down an empty syrup-bottle.
And that's how Benjamin Rymer came home. His father and mother had never
seen him since before the discovery of the trouble; for as soon as he
had changed the bank-note in the letter, he was off. The affair had
frightened him a little--that is, the stir made over it, of which he
had contrived to get notice; since then he had been passably steady,
making a living for himself in Birmingham as assistant to a surgeon
and druggist. He had met Robert Ashton a short time ago (this was the
account he now gave), heard from that gentleman rather a bad account
of his father, and so thought it his duty to give up what he was
about, and come home. His duty! Ben Rymer's duty!!
Ben was a tall, bony fellow, with a passably liberal education. He
might not have been unsteady but for bad companions. Ben did not aid in
robbing the butcher's till--he had not quite come to that--neither was
he privy to it; but he did get persuaded into trying to dispose of one
of the stolen notes. It had been the one desperate act of his life, and
it had sobered him. Time, however, effaces impressions; from two to
three years had gone on since then; nothing had transpired, never so
much as a suspicion had fallen on Mr. Benjamin, and he grew bold and
came home.
Timberdale rubbed its eyes with astonishment that next autumn day, when
it woke up to see Benjamin Rymer in his father's shop, a white apron on,
and serving the customers who went in, as naturally as though he had
never left it. Where had he been all that while? they asked. Improving
himself in his profession, coolly avowed Ben with unruffled face.
And so the one chance--rest of mind--for the father's return to health
and life, went out. The prolonged time, passing without discovery,
giving a greater chance day by day that it might never happen, could but
have a beneficial effect on Mr. Rymer. But when Ben made his appearance,
put his head, so to say, into the very stronghold of danger, all his
sickness and his fear came back again.
Ben did not know why his father kept so poorly and looked so ill. Never
a word, in his sensitiveness, had Mr. Rymer spoken to his son of that
past night's work. Ben might suspect, but he did not know. Mr. Rymer
would come down when he was not fit to do so, and take up his place in
the shop on a stool. Ben made fun of it: in sport more than ill-feeling:
telling the customers to look at the old ghost there. Ben made himself
perfectly at home; would sometimes hold a levée in the shop if his
father was out of it, when he and his friends, young men of Timberdale,
would talk and laugh the roof off.
People talk of the troubles of the world, and say their name is legion:
poverty, sickness, disappointment, disgrace, debt, difficulty; but there
is no trouble the human heart can know like that brought by rebellious
children. To old Rymer, with his capacity for taking things to heart, it
had been as a long crucifixion. And yet--the instinctive love of a
parent cannot die out: recollect David's grief for wicked Absalom:
"Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!"
Still, compared with what he used to be, Ben Rymer was steady. As the
winter approached, there set in another phase of the reformation; for he
pulled up even from the talking and laughing, and became as good as
gold. You might have thought he had taken his dead grandfather, the
clergyman, for a model, and was striving to walk in his steps. He went
to church, read his medical works, was pleasant at home, gentle with
Margaret, and altogether the best son in the world.
"Will it last, Benjamin?" his father asked him sorrowfully.
"It shall last, father; I promise it," was the earnestly-spoken answer.
"Forget the past, and I will never, I hope, try you again."
Ben kept his promise throughout the winter, and seemed likely to keep
it always. Mr. Rymer grew stronger, and was in business regularly, which
gave Ben more leisure for his books. It was thought that a good time had
set in for the Rymers; but, as Mrs. Todhetley says, you cannot control
Fate.
* * * * *
One day, when we were again staying at Crabb Cot, I had to call at the
shop for a box of "Household Pills," Rymer's own making. When any one
was ailing at home, Mrs. Todhetley would administer a dose of these
pills. But that Rymer was so conscientious a man, I should have thought
they were composed of bread and pepper. Mrs. Todhetley pinned her faith
to them, and said they did wonders.
Well, I had to go to Timberdale on other matters, and was told to call,
when there, for a box of these delectable Household Pills. Mr. Rymer and
his son stood behind the counter, the one making up his books, Ben
pounding something in a mortar. Winter was just on the turn, and the
trees and hedges were beginning to shoot into bud. Ben left his pounding
to get the pills.
"Is this Mr. Rymer's? Halloa, Ben! All right. How goes it, old boy?"
The door had been opened with a burst, and the above words met our
ears, in a tone not over-steady. They came from a man who wore sporting
clothes, and his hat very much on one side. Ben Rymer stared in
surprise; his mouth dropped.
But that it was early in the day, and one does not like to libel people,
it might have been thought the gentleman had taken a little too much of
something strong. He swaggered up to the counter, and held out his hand
to Ben. Ben, just then wrapping up the box of pills, did not appear to
see it.
"Had a hunt after you, old fellow," said the loud-voiced stranger. "Been
to Birmingham and all kinds of places. Couldn't think where you'd hid
yourself."
"You are back pretty soon," growled Ben, who certainly did not seem to
relish the visit.
"Been back a month. Couldn't get on in the New World; its folks are
too down for me. I say, I want a word with you. Can't say it here, I
suppose?"
"No," returned Ben, rather savagely.
"Just come out a bit, Ben," resumed the stranger, after a short pause.
"I can't," replied Ben--and his tone sounded more like I won't. "I have
my business to attend to."
"Bother business! Here goes, then: it's your fault if you make me
speak before people. Gibbs has come out of hiding, and is getting
troublesome----"
"If you will go outside and wait, I'll come to you," interrupted Ben at
this, very quickly.
The man turned and swaggered out. Ben gave me the pills with one hand,
and took off his apron with the other. Getting his hat, he was hastening
out, when Mr. Rymer touched his arm.
"Who is that man, Benjamin?"
"A fellow I used to know in Tewkesbury, father."
"What's his name?"
"Cotton. I'll soon despatch him and be back again," concluded Ben, as he
disappeared.
I put down half-a-crown for the pills, and Mr. Rymer left his place to
give me the change. There had been a sort of consciousness between us,
understood though not expressed, since the night when I had seen him
giving way to his emotion in Crabb Ravine. This man's visit brought the
scene back again. Rymer's eyes looked into mine, and then fell.
"Ben is all right now, Mr. Rymer."
"I could not wish him better than he is. It's just as though he were
striving to atone for the past. I thought it would have killed me at the
time."
"I should forget it."
"Forget it I never can. You don't know what it was, Mr. Johnny," he
continued in a sort of frightened tone, a red spot coming into his pale
thin cheeks, "and I trust you never will know. I never went to bed
at night but to lie listening for a summons at my door--the officers
searching for my son, or to tell me he was taken. I never rose in the
morning but my spirit fainted within me, as to what news the day might
bring forth."
Mr. Benjamin and his friend were pacing side by side in the middle
of the street when I went out, probably to be out of the reach of
eavesdroppers. They did not look best pleased with each other; seemed
to be talking sharply.
"I tell you I can't and I won't," Ben was saying, as I passed them in
crossing over. "What do you come after me for? When a fellow wants to
be on the square, you won't let him. As to Gibbs----"
The voices died out of hearing. I went home with the pills, and thought
no more about the matter.
Spring weather is changeable, as we English know only too well. In less
than a week, a storm of sleet and snow was drifting down. In the midst
of it, who should present himself at Crabb Cot at midday but Lee, the
letter-carrier. His shaky old legs seemed hardly able to bear him up
against the storm, as he came into the garden. I opened the door,
wondering what he wanted.
"Please can I see the Squire in private, sir?" asked Lee, who was
looking half angry, half rueful. Lee had never been in boisterous
spirits since the affair of the bank-note took place. Like a great many
more people, he grew fanciful with years, and could not be convinced
but that the suspicion in regard to it lay on _him_.
"Come in out of the storm, Lee. What's up?"
"Please, Mr. Ludlow, sir, let me get to see the Squire," was all his
answer.
The Squire was in his little room, hunting for a mislaid letter in the
piece of furniture he called his bureau. As I shut old Lee in, I heard
him, Lee, begin to say something about the bank-note and Benjamin Rymer.
An instinct of the truth flashed over me--as sure as fate something
connecting Ben with it had come out. In I shot again, to make one at
the conference. The Squire was looking too surprised to notice me.
"It was Mr. Rymer's son who took out the good note and put in the bad
one?" he exclaimed. "Take care what you say, Lee."