The rich man has his intellect, and its pleasures; he has his books, his
studies, his club, his lectures, his excursions; he has foreign lands,
splendid cities, galleries, museums, ancient and modern art: the poor man
has his child, solitary delight of his hard tasked life, only solace of
his cheerless home.
Richard Jones had but that one child, that peevish, sickly, fretful
little daughter; but she was his all. He was twenty-one, when the grocer
in whose shop his youth had been spent, died a bankrupt, leaving one
child, a daughter, a pale, sickly young creature of seventeen, called
Mary Smith.
Richard Jones had veneration large. He had always felt for this young
lady an awful degree of respect, quite sufficient of itself to preclude
love, had he been one to know this beautiful feeling by more than hearsay
--which he was not. Indeed, he never could or would have thought of Mary
Smith as something less than a goddess, if, calling at the house of the
relative to whom she had gone, and finding her in tears, and, on her own
confession, very miserable, he had not felt moved to offer himself, most
hesitatingly, poor fellow I for her acceptance.
Miss Smith gave gracious consent. They were married, and lived most
happily together. Poor little Mary's temper was none of the best; but
Richard made every allowance: "Breaking down of the business--other's
death--having to marry a poor fellow like him, &c." In short, he proved
the most humble and devoted of husbands, toiled like a slave to keep his
wife like a lady, and never forgot the honour she had conferred upon him;
to this honour Mrs. Jones added, after three years, by presenting him
with a sickly baby, which, to its mother's name of Mary, proudly added
that of its maternal grandfather Smith.
A year after the birth of Mary Smith Jones, her mother died. The
affections of the widower centred on his child; he had, indeed, felt more
awe than fondness for his deceased wife--love had never entered his
heart; he earned it with him, pure and virgin, to the grave, impressed
with but one image--that of his daughter.
He reared his little baby alone and unaided. Once, indeed, a female
friend insisted on relieving him from the charge; but, after surrendering
his treasure to her, after spending a sleepless night, he rose with dawn,
and went and fetched back his darling. During his wife's lifetime, he had
been employed in a large warehouse; but now, in order to stay at home, he
turned basket-maker. His child slept with him, cradled in his arms; he
washed, combed, dressed it himself every morning, and made a woman of
himself for its sake.
When Mary grew up, her father sent her to school, and resumed his more
profitable out-door occupation. After a long search and much
deliberation, he prenticed her to Rachel Gray, and with her Mary Jones
had now been about a month.
"How pretty she looked, with that bit of pink on her cheek," soliloquized
Richard Jones, as he turned round the corner of the street on his way
homewards; and fairer than his mistress's image to the lover's fancy,
young Mary's face rose before her father on the gloom of the dark night.
A woman's voice suddenly broke on his reverie. She asked him to direct
her to the nearest grocer's shop.
"I am a stranger to the neighbourhood," he replied; "but I dare say this
young person can tell us;" and he stopped a servant-girl, and put the
question to her.
"A grocer's shop?" she said, "there's not one within a mile. You must go
down the next street on your right-hand, turn into the alley on your
left, then turn to your right again, and if you take the fifth street
after that, it will take you to the Teapot."
She had to repeat her directions twice before the woman fairly understood
them.
"What a chance!" thought Jones, as he again walked on; "not a grocer's
shop within a mile. Now, suppose I had, say fifty pounds, just to open
with, how soon the thing would do for itself. And then I'd have my little
Mary at home with me. Yes, that would be something!"
Ay; the shop and Mary!--ambition and love! Ever since he had dealt tea
and sugar in Mr. Smith's establishment, Richard Jones had been haunted
with the desire to become a tradesman, and do the same thing in a shop of
his own. But, conscious of the extravagant futility of this wish, Jones
generally consoled himself with the thought that grocer's shops were as
thick as mushrooms, and that, capital or no capital, there was no room
for him.
And now, as he walked home, dreaming, he could not but sigh, for there
was room, he could not doubt it--but where was the capital? He was still
vaguely wondering in his own mind, by what magical process the said
capital could possibly be called up, when he reached his own home. There
he found that, in his absence, a rudely scrawled scrap of paper had been
slipped under his room door; it was to the following purport:
"Dear J.,
"Als up; farm broke. Weral inn for it.
"Yours,
"S. S."
This laconic epistle signified that the firm in whose warehouse Richard
Jones was employed, had stopped payment Rich men lost their thousands,
and eat none the worse a dinner; Richard Jones lost his week's wages, his
future employment, and remained stunned with the magnitude of the blow.
His first thought flew to his child.
"How shall I pay Miss Gray for my little Mary's keep?" he exclaimed,
inwardly.
He cast his look round the room to see what he could pledge or sell.
Alas! there was little enough there. His next feeling was,
"My darling must know nothing about it Thank God, she is not with me now!
Thank God!"
But, though this was some sort of comfort, the future still looked so
dark and threatening, that Jones spent a sleepless night, tossing in his
bed, and groaning so loudly, that his landlady forsook her couch to knock
at his door, and inquire, to his infinite confusion, "if Mr. Jones felt
poorly, and if there was anything she could do for him, and if he would
like some hot ginger?" To which Mr. Jones replied, with thanks, "that he
was quite well, much obliged to her all the same."
After this significant hint, he managed to keep quiet. Towards morning,
he fell asleep, and dreamed he had found a purse full of guineas, and
that he was going to open a grocer's shop, to be called the Teapot.
Richard Jones was sober, intelligent enough for what he had to do, and
not too intelligent--which is a great disadvantage; he bore an excellent
character; and yet, somehow or other, when he searched for employment,
there seemed to be no zoom for him; and had he been a philosopher, which,
most fortunately for his peace of mind, he was not, he must inevitably
hare come to the conclusion, that in this world he was not wanted.
We are not called upon to enter into the history of his struggles. He
maintained a sort of precarious existence, now working at this, now
working at that; for he was a Jack of all trades, and could torn his hand
to anything, but certain of no continual employment. How he went through
it all, still paying Miss Gray, still keeping up a decent appearance,
contracting no debts, the pitying eye which alone looks down on the
bitter trials of the poor, also alone knows.
The poorer a man gets, the more he thinks of wealth and money; the
narrower does the world close around him, and all the wider grows the
world of his charms. The shop, which had only been a dormant idea in
Richard Jones's mind, now became a living phantom; day and night, mom and
noon it haunted him. When he had nothing to do--and this was,
unfortunately, too often the case--he sought intuitively the suburb
where Rachel Gray dwelt; ascertained, over and over, that within the mile
circuit of that central point there did not exist one grocer's shop, and
finally determined that the precise spot where, for public benefit and
its own advantage, a grocer's shop should be, was just round the corner
of the street next to that of Rachel Gray, in a dirty little house, now
occupied by a rag and bottle establishment, with very dirty windows, and
a shabby black doll dangling like a thief, over the doorway; spite of
which enticing prospect, the rag and bottle people seemed to thrive but
indifferently, if one might judge from the sulky, ill-tempered looking
woman, whom Jones always saw within, sorting old rags, and scowling at
him whenever she caught him in the act of peering in.
It was, therefore, with no surprise, though with some uneasiness, that
coming one day to linger as usual near the place, James found the rag and
bottle shop closed, the black doll gone, and the words, "To let"
scrawled, in white chalk, on the shutters. Convinced that none but a
grocer could take such a desirable shop, and desirous, at least, to know
when this fated consummation was to take place, Jones took courage, and
went on as far as Rachel Gray's.
Jane, the grim apprentice, opened to him,
"There's no one at home," she said.
Mr. Jones pleaded fatigue, and asked to be permitted to rest awhile. She
did not oppose his entrance, but grimly repelled all his attempts at
opening a conversation. He entered on that most innocent topic, the
weather, and praised it.
"It has been raining," was Jane's emphatic reply.
"Oh! has it? What's them bells ringing for, I wonder."
"They aint a ringing; they're a tolling."
Mr. Jones, rather confused at being thus put down by a girl of sixteen,
coughed behind his hand, and looked round the room for a subject. He
found none, save a general inquiry after the health of Mary, Mrs. Gray,
and Miss Gray.
"They're all well enough," disdainfully replied Jane.
"Oh, are they! I see the rag and bottle shop is shut," he added, plunging
desperately into the subject.
"S'pose it is!" answered Jane, eyeing him rather defiantly; for the rag
and bottle woman was her own aunt; and she thought the observation of a
personal nature.
Though much taken aback, Jones, spurred on by the irresistible wish to
know, ventured on another question.
"You don't know who is going to take it next, do you?"
"Oh! you want to take it, do you?" said Jane.
"I--I!" exclaimed Jones, flurried and disconcerted. "La, bless the young
woman! I aint in the rag and bottle line, am I?"
He thought by this artful turn to throw his young enemy off the scent;
but her rejoinder showed him the futility of the attempt.
"I didn't say you was, did I?" she replied, drily.
Jones rose precipitately, and hastily desiring his love to Mrs. Gray, and
his respects to Mary, he retreated most shamefully beaten. He did not
breathe freely until he reached the end of the street, and once more
found himself opposite the closed rag shop. How he had come there, he did
not rightly know; for it was not his way home. But, being there, he
naturally gave it another look. He stood gazing at it very attentively,
and absorbed in thought, when he was roused by a sharp voice, which said,
"P'raps you'd like to see it within."
The voice came from above. Richard looked up. The first floor window was
open, and a man's head was just thrust out of it. It looked down at him
in the street, and apparently belonged to a little old man, to whom one
very sharp eye--the other was closed up quite tight--and a long nose,
which went all of one side, gave a rather remarkable appearance.
"Thank you, sir," replied Jones, rather confused. "I--I--"
Before he had got to the end of his speech, the old man vanished from the
window, and suddenly appeared at the private door, beckoning him in.
"Come in," he said, coaxingly, like an ogre luring in an unwary little
boy.
And, drawn as by a magnet, Jones entered.
"Dark passage, but good shop," said the old man. He opened a door, and in
the shop suddenly stepped Richard Jones. It was small, dirty, and smelt
of grease and old rags.
"Good shop," said the old man, rubbing his hands, in seeming great glee;
"neat back parlour;" he opened a glass door, and Jones saw a triangular
room, not much larger than a good-sized cupboard.
"More rooms up stairs," briskly said the old man; he nimbly darted up an
old wooden staircase, that creaked under him. Mechanically Jones
followed. There were two rooms on the upper and only storey; one of
moderate size; the other, a little larger than the back parlour.
"Good shop," began the old man, reckoning on his fingers, "ca-pital shop;
neat parlour--very neat; upper storey, two rooms; one splendid; cosy
bed-room; rent of the whole, only thirty-five pounds a-year--only
thirty-five pounds a-year!"
The repetition was uttered impressively.
"Thank you--much obliged to you," began Richard Jones, wishing himself
fairly out of the place; "but you see--"
"Stop a bit," eagerly interrupted the old man, catching Jones by the
button-hole, and fixing him, as the 'Ancient Mariner' fixed the wedding
guest, with his glittering eye, "stop a bit; you take the house, keep
shop, parlour, and bedroom for yourself and family--plenty; furnish
front room, let it at five shillings a week; fifty-two weeks in the year;
five times two, ten--put down naught, carry one; five times five,
twenty-five, and one, twenty-six--two hundred and sixty shillings, make
thirteen pounds; take thirteen pounds from thirty-five--"
"Law bless you, Sir!" hastily interrupted Jones, getting frightened at
the practical landlord view the one-eyed and one-sided-nosed old man
seemed to take of his presence in the house. "Law bless you, Sir! it's
all a mistake, every bit of it."
"A mistake!" interrupted the old man, his voice rising shrill and loud.
"A mistake! five times two, ten--"
"Well, but I couldn't think of such a thing," in his turn interrupted
Jones. "I--"
"Well then, say thirty pound," pertinaciously resumed the old man; "take
thirteen from thirty--"
"No, I can't then--really, I can't," desperately exclaimed Jones; "on my
word I can't."
"Well, then, say twenty-five; from twenty-five take thirteen--"
"I tell you, 'tain't a bit of use your taking away thirteen at that
rate," interrupted Jones, rather warmly.
"And what will you give, then?" asked the old man, with a sort of
screech.
"Why, nothing!" impatiently replied Jones. "Who ever said I would give
anything? I didn't--did I?"
"Then what do you come creeping and crawling about the place for?" hissed
the old man, his one eye glaring defiance on Jones, "eh! just tell me
that. Why, these two months you've crept and crept, and crawled, and
crawled, till you've sent the rag and bottle people away. 'Sir,' says the
rag and bottle woman to me, 'Sir, we can't stand it no longer. There's a
man, Sir, and he prowls around the shop. Sir, and he jist looks in, and
darts off agin, and he won't buy no rags, and he hasn't no bottles to
sell; and my husband and me, Sir, we can't stand it--that's all.' Well,
and what have you got to say to that, I should like to know?"
Jones, who never had a very ready tongue, and who was quite confounded at
the accusation, remained dumb.
"I'll tell you what you are, though," cried the old man, his voice rising
still higher with his wrath; "you are a crawling, creeping, low, sneaking
fellow!"
"Now, old gentleman!" cried Jones, in his turn losing his temper, "just
keep a civil tongue in your head, will you? I didn't ask to come in, did
I? And if I did look at the shop at times, why, a cat can look at a king,
can't he?"
Spite of the excellence of the reasoning thus popularly expressed, Jones
perceived that the old man was going to renew his offensive language, and
as he wisely mistrusted his own somewhat hasty temper, he prudently
walked downstairs, and let himself out. But then he reached the street,
the old man's head was already out of the first-floor window, and Jones
turned the corner pursued with the words "creeping," "crawling." He lost
the rest.